Phoenix Zoo, and boy am I tired

You combine a couple of nights of not sleeping well with a rather large and well arranged zoo and you get one tired Ticia.  And three tired kiddos.

We got to feed the manta rays, which totally made Batman’s day because those are his favorite animals.  I think I now have about 100 something pictures of manta rays between the pictures I took and the pictures he took of them (I’ll let you guess who took more).  He has grand plans to write stories about the manta rays when we get home.

We got the zoo pass, or whatever they call it, and had unlimited carousel rides, manta ray visits, and train rides.  And we made out like bandits from that.  We probably rode the carousel 10 times with the kids happily switching animals each time.  The boys and I visited the manta rays 3 different times (after the first visit Princess opted out), and we got a fun tour of the zoo, including this fun story about a baboon:

Every day at lunch time they go to the different cages and throw food into the animal enclosures.  For the vegetarian/omnivores it’s an assortment of fruits/nuts/vegetables.  Well, the male baboon, who we’ll call Spock, because I forget his name LOVES grapes.  One day he was happily eating the grapes when a bird swooped in and grabbed a grape.  Well, he was not having that, so he grabbed the bird and took the grape back.  He ate the grape and then ATE THE BIRD!

Moral of the story: Don’t steal the baboon’s grapes.

I have over 160 pictures from the zoo today, but it’s late, and I walked a lot and that was topped off by going to Chuck E Cheese with the family we were visiting today, so I am tired.  I’ll show you guys some fun videos of an orangutan and other interesting things I learned later.  Maybe even tell you about the fun craziness of me giving directions to my Mom here………..