Philadelphia – Day 5
We decided to see one last site in Philly before we drove home today – the Philadelphia Zoo.
I wanted to go partly because they had an okapi there – one of my favorite animals – but also because I’m just a sucker for zoos.
We found the giraffes.
And hippos.
Andrew had a moment with the otters.
The orangutans had sheets in their enclosure for some enrichment today. When we got there, one of the orangutans had her sheet on like a veil. Then she dropped that one and followed the other orangutan, who had a purple sheet. They both hid under that sheet for a few moments, then got up and walked off together, one holding the other’s shoulder. Very cute.
One really cool thing this zoo had was what it calls “Zoo 360.” Essentially they have “tunnels” through parts of the zoo so that some of the animals can roam a bit further than their normal enclosures. I think they had it for some of the primates, but we experienced it in the big cat area. As we were walking through the exhibits, we saw a pair of clouded leopards meandering over us.
And while we were having lunch, across from the big cats, a jaguar came over to see what was up. (It’s a little hard to see in this picture, but the “tunnel” was near the window of the cafe.) It happened that some of the zoo’s maintenance workers needed to get to something near the tunnel, so we watched them wait until the jaguar turned back around to a point where a zookeeper could close off the tunnel.
In the small mammal house, we saw the aardvarks sleeping together. Look at that belly!
And, of course, we found the okapi!
We did take a moment to get a picture of the two of us.
Happy 10th Anniversary to Us!
