Abilene Zoo and the West Texas Fair

Last Saturday we went to the Abilene Zoo. We were very impressed and we had a great time. The zoo here is small but it has got great animals. When you buy your tickets they ask you if you want to buy some crackers for the animals. We bought a couple of bags. The animals loved them. We fed some to the bear first. He loved it as is apparent in our video.

Then we went on to feed the Giraffes. There is a bridge that goes right over the giraffe exhibit. You go on top of the bridge and feed the giraffes from the bridge. The kids loved it so much. The giraffes would stretch our their long tongues and wrap it around the cracker. We got to see them right up close. The zoo is adjacent to a small lake. While at the zoo you can go onto a small pier built on the lake and feed the catfish. It is total chaos. The catfish shove each other out of the way. All you see is a sea of kissie lips pointing up at you. Every now and then a fish gets shoved on top of the mass of catfish trying to get a cracker and struggles to get itself quickly back into the water. I don't think there are fish anywhere else in that lake except right next to that pier.

The zoo also had lions, a rhinoceros, zebras, bison, an alligator, monkeys, flamingos, an aviary, and an aquarium, along with several other smaller exhibits. We saw the entire zoo in an hour and a half so it's not very big but the animals are big and impressive and it is a well maintained beautiful zoo. We really had a great time.

Yesterday we went to the west Texas fair and rodeo. We had a wonderful time. We looked at the exhibits and we bought some chocolate covered pretzels. We watched the lambs being judged and looked at all the farm animal;s. The kids favorite parts were riding on the Ferris wheel and petting the animals at the petting zoo. A donkey in the petting zoo kept pushing away a cow and taking her food anytime anyone tried to feed her. I had Lorin distract the donkey with food while I fed the cow. the cow sucked up my entire hand along with the food. While I was not injure at all my hand was covered in thick sticky slime. It was pretty gross. I had no idea cows were so slimy. That night we were all exhausted and just collapsed when we got home. Gary had had his 12 hour anatomy lab in Lubbock and I had the three kids at the fair. I think we were all in bed by nine o'clock.