I have incredibly mixed feelings about zoos. Well, that's not true. I don't like them, they make me sad to see the animals cooped up, often alone in an environment that maybe only slightly resembles their home environment. However, there is something to be said for exposure to animals, some of the rehabilitation work that zoos do, etc. So, they are good and bad. The zoo in Omaha, for instance, seemed like a pretty decent zoo that tried really hard to give realistic homes to animals and give them friends.
In Chippewa Falls they have a small zoo at Irvine Park. A free zoo that has a handful of animals and a petting zoo. We took a short weekend visit down to Eau Claire and we decided to put our mixed feelings about zoos aside and bring Lilly to the Irvine Park Zoo.
She fell asleep in the car about a minute before we parked the car, fighting sleep the entire twenty-minute drive to Chippewa. We slathered on some sunscreen while she slept and then woke her up to check out the animals. The girl was tired while we were there, but seemed to enjoy seeing the animals. She was especially enamored with the birds, goats, and rabbits. Yes, the birds and animals that she can see on a more regular basis. The tigers? Eh. The bears? Eh. The hyenas? Eh.
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| Animals at the zoo |
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| Lilly and the "hop hop" and walking along the fence line by the animals |
After checking out the last of the animals (minus the bison, which we didn't walk quite far enough to see) we went back and played at the park. There was an incredibly obnoxious merry-go-round and a small playground with swings. Lilly put on her brave face and climbed through the tunnel and went down the tube slide with me. Then she was in the swing for awhile, getting great pushes from Grandpa. We were trying to decide how much longer to stick around, but Lilly pretty made that decision for us. The poor girl was exhausted (probably from her full day of day care the previous day - which she rocked!) so we went and checked out the ducks and geese and headed home, certain she'd fall asleep in the car. Nope. She fought sleep the entire way back to my parents' house and well into her nap.
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Lilly and the bear statues. She was really quite nervous and scared of them
at first, but Nick showed her they were fake and couldn't hurt her. |
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| Swinging and clearly exhausted and ready to go home! |
While I am glad we went and I think all of us had a nice time, I am in no rush to go back to a zoo any time soon.
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