The Philadelphia Zoo

We just got back from the Philadelphia Zoo. We saw a lot of animals doing some very interesting things. First we went into the reptile house and saw some snakes, lizards, crocodiles, aligators, and turtles. After that I saw some bigger turtles that live outside. Then we saw the elephants. Then in the primate house we saw some very interesting monkeys. There were lemurs, and orangutan and some smaller monkeys. One of the smaller monkeys was a baby and it was really cute. At one point it was riding on its mother's back. After the prime mate house it was raining really hard. This year there are no lions or tigers at the zoo because they are rebuilding something in the carnival house. There won't be any lions or tigers there until the spring of 2006. After it stopped raining so hard I saw three cheetah brothers. They were very interesting to watch. They were pacing back and forth, and one time I saw them running together. Cheetahs run very fast. On the sign it said that they were kept together because cheetah brothers have very strong bonds with each other. We also saw some baboons outside and then we saw some ducklings with four adult ducks who were probably the mothers and fathers. They were so cute. I got some pictures of them that I will post later. Another cute thing we saw were some baby peacocks with their mother. It was the first time I ever saw baby peacocks. They were adorable. The baby animals are just the cutest things. Sarah loves baby animals. We saw two elephants swimming in the water, which was very interesting to watch. One of the elephants was an asian female. I could tell because it didn't have any tusks. At one point she tried to climb onto the other elephant's back, which had tusks, so it might have been a male. They were being very playful in the water. Sometimes they would climb partially out of the water and got really close to us, and one time one of them extended its trunk out onto the grass to grab some plants to eat; the trunk was so close you could almost touch it. Then I saw one put both feet out of the water onto the ground and reach its trunk up into the tree and grab some leaves to eat. Everyone got so excited watching those elephants, especially when it looked like they were climbing out of the water. It was fun at the zoo today, even though it was raining about half the time and people got all wet. I will post the pictures when I get them on the computer.