Our Trip to the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium

As our vacation was fast drawing to a close, we met up with my dad to go to lunch and then to Pt. Defiance Zoo and Aquarium.

While waiting to meet up with my dad for lunch, we stopped off at a playground for Judah to burn off some steam.

Everytime he goes to these places, he suddenly transforms into Spiderman.



The restaurant we went to was on the waterfront, and the view outside our window included this darling little place.

It would have been a completely lackluster building had they not added mirrors (made to look like windows) with shutters and flowerboxes. Such simple additions really made a statement.



Though not native to the Washington, these Monkey Puzzle (also known as Monkey Tail) trees are a favorite landscaping tree around the Puget Sound area. The older these trees get, the longer the 'tails'. They consist of very sharp, firm pointed leaves all layered together like scales along the limbs. It'd hurt if you grabbed the branch.



Once inside the zoo, we went to the Meercat exhibit.

I've always gotten a real kick out of Meercats funny behavior, and Judah was really enjoying their antics.

We stayed for a while watching them dive into the safety of their hole whenever a seagull flew overhead. Here they are creeping out again when the coast was clear.



I couldnt' resist imitating the seagull's sound just to watch them dive in again.

What amuses me so much is that after taking refuge, they always send out a scout to be sure everything is clear.

The little scout looks around and signals to the others in their hole, and suddenly they all come rushing out again. They remain cautious for a while afterwards, but manage to still live fairly normally in their little habitat.



Here's my little hermit crab...looking rather crabby. It was 103 that day. In a climate that rarely gets up into the high 90's, and it was well past his usual naptime.



Cousin E retreats into her shell for some shade.



Meanwhile, Jericho was nearly consumed by a giant sea anemone.



In the bug exhibit, I came across the stuff of nightmares.

Lots of la cucaraches.

Hissing cockroaches, no less. **shudders** They just kept scurrying around in there, too. Ugh.



This poor lemur was trying to beat the heat on a shaded rock. His expression kind of reflected how we were all feeling right about then during the heat of the day.



Here was a gorgeous artichoke in bloom.



This is a sculpture I've loved since I was a little girl. It's called Family.



We sought air-conditioned refuge in one of the aquarium buildings.

They had an area where children could try on all kinds of sea creature costumes.

Judah went the route of Starfish.



Cousin E loved the filmy, floaty jellyfish costume.



And the octopus.

It was all so novel, the kids were entranced...and I let down my guard, totally oblivious to the danger lurking about.

See the aquarium employee behind her?

I looked up just in time to see her FREAK OUT right then, shrieking and clutching her chest, then drawing up a leg and covering her face and then mouth as though witnessing a train wreck, and continued to pat her chest as she calmed down again enough to speak. "Oh, my gosh...oh, my gosh" she said over and over.



She gasped, "Oh, man...I thought I was going to have to call someone to fish that little boy out of the shark tank!"

My heart seized suddenly, as I'd just seen Judah running towards my dad and Jeff somewhere behind me.

I turned around just in time to see Jeff lowering him to the ground and scolding him after snatching him back from certain danger.

The circular tank walls are low enough that younger children can peer over the edges and look down several feet into the large, deep shark tank...but Judah had been running and when he'd leapt up to the edge of the wall (just as he does on our sofas at home) he very nearly toppled over...into shark infested waters!

My dad's mouth dropped open, astounded at how quickly that had happened and how quickly Jeff managed to react, his own heart pumping overtime.

Jeff said he would have jumped in after him had he gone over, though we all felt certain that a ruckus like that in their tank might have incited a feeding frenzy among even the well-fed but bored sharks.

Yes, that was Judah's second and final brush with danger on our vacation, and though it was all over and done before I saw it, I have no doubt I'll be sporting a few more grays.

On the way downstairs, we stopped by this exhibit where my dad and the kids re-enacted what could have happened.



Next, we made our way to the touch-tanks, where Judah and Cousin E manhandled touched everything in sight.



They had quite an array of different starfish, sea cucumbers and sea urchins in their tanks.



Due to the heat and humidity, many of the exhibits were all steamed up.

Naturally, my kid had to leave his mark for me to find when I finally got to that portion of the exhibit a couple of paces behind him.



We finally located the much publicized Lorakeet (?) exhibit. They called them Budgy Buddies or something, but I never did make the connection as to why.

For the astronomical price of $1, you could 'rent' a popsicle stick that had a dab of peanut butter and bird seed stuck on the end, which you could then hold up and the birds which flew around loose in the aviary would land on the stick where you could see them up close.

The birds were aggressive feeders, but the kids enjoyed it.







"This one has teal feathers, mom! " Yes indeedy, there were birds of just about every color in that exhibit.





Later, we found one of my own favorite childhood exhibits. My mom has pictures of us somewhere visiting the same exhibit (and I think the same elephant) back when we were little.

Judah really wanted to see them up close.



They had just finished giving themselves dust baths in an effort to cool off.



We again circled through the downstairs portion of the shark tank building, which has all kinds of other sea life in tanks on the wall opposite the giant shark tank...this little reef with baby sharks was one of the exhibits on the way there.



Judah has a close encounter with one of the sharks that might have made a tasty snack out of him earlier.



Here were some shark shots I was taking in an effort to get a good photo for the painting on Jericho's bedroom wall.



Here is a shark sizing up my dad.



We finally got past the creepy stuff to these cute reef exhibits.

"NEMO!!" Judah yelled excitedly.



Here was Dorey, saying, "I speak whale!"



This was a teensy-tiny little seahorse that was secured in a piece of fan coral (?) in a dark little tank lit with a black light just so that you could spot him.

Judah looked at it for a bit and said sadly, "He needs his mommy cuz he's aw awone."



Outside, we wandered over to see the otters.

They are such fun to watch frolicking about. The darker one was doing water aerobics most of the time we were there, but held still for this photo in the same position my boys are in while lying on the floor reading a book.

The zoo keepers had put loads of ice in a nearby pool for these guys to cool off in, because keeping the water the right temperature was proving to be a challenge in the hot weather.



Here we spotted a reindeer...sometimes called Caribou, depending on what part of the world you live in. Judah called out, "DEER!".

We were beginning to rue the day we ever started the deer-dollar game.



We finally called it a day, because we'd run out of cold bottled waters, and the adults kids were getting kind of irritable from the heat.

On our way back to my moms, we stopped off to cool off in this inviting body of water.

It was crowded there that evening, but the kids enjoyed the cool breeze and wading into the cold water did help cool them off.



Cousin E spent a bit playing on this old piece of driftwood.





We realized it wasn't going to cool off anytime soon, so we took the kids to see a movie just so we could sit in the A/C for a while.



And that was the end of another lovely vacation day in Washington.