My Birthday

My trip to the San Diego Zoo started with the flamingos, but they are stinky and boring so I will just skip to the coolest animals.

The pandas are the Zoo's most celebrated animals. Here you can see Gao Gao the Father Bear pacing around his pen waiting his food.

Now you can see Gao Gao eating bamboo. Look at how he's sitting! He is the most adorable creature on the face of the planet even though he's tearing that bamboo to shreds with his mean pointy teeth.

This is Mother Bear and her baby, Zhen Zhen. ZZ is in the tree. She is 50 pounds of cuddly fluff. Mother Bear was eating and then decided she was done before I could get close enough for a proper photo. No, my camera does not perform the zoom function.

Next up, hippos! Hippos are possibly the only animals cuter than pandas. Look, he's smiling! His name is Jabba! He is fat and squishy and he eats leaves!

This is a hippo swimming. Or I guess he was walking on the bottom of the tank.

These are the two hippos saying hi to each other.

And this is hippo skin!

Here are two rhinos and two elephants. The white rhinos are two of the last seven on earth, according to the tour bus driver. The elephants aren't so rare. The small elephant is from Asia the big elephant is from Africa.

Here's a curious giraffe. He was much closer in real life. And he was drooling.

This perhaps the worst picture I've ever taken.

Here's a sleeping baby gorilla. She was very cute and so sweet for sleeping so near the glass.

Gorilla foot!

Finally, three baby tigers. Adorable!

I loved going to the Zoo and staring at the animals without having to think of profound things to say. They were cute and funny and sometimes scary and that's about as involved as it got. When I got home, I had a present waiting for me from my mom -- it was a quilt made from all my childhood/teenage/college tshirts! Thanks Mom!!!