Furry Friends at the L.A. Zoo

Carpe Diem! Seize the day! As the late Robin Williams had once said in Dead Poets Society. I think I'm slowly starting to understand the implications of what that entails. I've been wanting to go to the L.A. zoo for a while now. Many excuses popped its ugly heads: financial, time, distance, a great googly monster under the bed, you name it.

But lately I've been getting this feeling of "I've had enough of this bull poop." Seriously! I'm tired of feeling like I should have done something after making excuses for not doing it, and I'm tired of sitting around dreaming one day I'll do [insert exciting activity] when the conditions are right.

The conditions are never right!

You either do it or you don't. The moment is now. There is never a better time than now. Someone quoted that, I don't remember who, but that's not the point. If you keep telling yourself "later" it might never happen. Unless, of course, you're an organized freak and puts everything in a planner and follows through no matter what. If you're that person, well, good for you! But I'm not.

So I saw that I have Friday off from work and seized the day! Off to the zoo I went with my friend, Ploy. These are a few of the residents we met...

A cute little meerkat.
This little guy is actually eyeing the girl standing next to me who was eating an ice cream cone.

You know, it's cute and all that they look at you with oogly eyes begging for food (my dog does it all the time whenever we eat), but it also goes to show that people have been feeding the animals despite signs warning not to. What's even sadder is the fact that included in the warning sign is a statement saying the animals are DIABETIC. C'mon, people, destroy your own health if you must, but don't do it to the animals!

He looks exactly like a lawn ornament!

In front of the reptile house.
That lizard seat has been baking in the sun all morning, so I was hovering the whole time. Hahaha!

He's flying! Under water. :)

This one just has a really long neck.
He looks friendly enough though.

"Hey there, good lookin'."

I've always been fascinated by snakes.
People say they don't have feelings, but it always amazes me when I see two sleeping together like this.
Or maybe Harry Potter has just convinced me that snakes are cool.
Who knows.

This horned toad. He looks so sleepy. :3

Just chillin' in the pool, you know.
Cuz he got nothing better to do.

Just sleeping wedged between trees, you know.
It's very comfortable there, I swear.

A gorilla minding her own business.

This guy. The only one of his friends (I hope he has friends because we didn't any more besides him) to come out and show himself on the ledge.

The lions sleeping.

A family of goats(?).
Love that goatee!

And these two are just hilarious!
If you look closely, you can see the guy on the left busy cleaning the right one's butt-butt.
He really had his face all up in there, we were laughing so hard!

I love how his head's cocked sideways and looking back over his shoulder.
I think he's a kind of vulture.

Mr. Alligator! That's not his real name though.
The zoo named him something like Reggie, but don't quote me on that.

I was actually pleasantly surprised at how clean and un-smelly the zoo is. The habitats are well maintained. The only part of the zoo that smells are when we were close to the marsupials. The koalas stink, man! They're cute and all, but if they smell that bad, I don't ever want to hold one! Nevertheless, the animals look healthy, well fed, and lively (the ones that are awake do anyway).

So it was a great experience overall. Pretty darn hot though! I don't recommend the shaved ice. It was totally overpriced and the syrup were not that tasty. There were, however, a bunch of bees by the snack stand. I'm not particularly put off by bees, quite the opposite actually, what with the concerning rising death of bee colonies. I was happy to see a bunch of them at the zoo, although I know someone who's scared of them  (ahem, Ploy). I must admit, bees can get annoying, especially when they can't seem to leave your sweets or sweaty skin alone.