Manila Zoo Field Trip with Ashley

Ashley and I went with her preschool to the Manila Zoo last Friday.  It was interesting as all of our zoo experiences have been but fun and Ashley was very brave!

 I laughed when we walked in and the first animal we saw was the elephant-just like at the Greenville Zoo.

 This man was giving the elephant breakfast-carrots, papayas, pineapples-cut only in half, still in their tough, bumpy skins, and he threw the cut off green tops too.  He also would tear loaves of bread (not sliced) into 2 chunks and the elephant would eat a chunk in a single bite.

 This is Ashley and her friend Aurora looking at a chicken in this glass cage-I thought it was a little weird that they put chickens in cages like this.  Then one of the adults pointed out that the chicken was the meal for the snake that lived in the glass cage-I was glad the snake seemed to be taking a nap while we were there.  Not something that I have ever seen in a zoo before!

 Ashley with her teacher, Teacher Boom

 The petting zoo part of the zoo-below is the first animal we encountered!

 a BIG snake that we held

 Ashley obviously did not inherit her GG's fear and dislike of snakes.

 She even held it by herself but got uncertain and scared when she could feel the snake starting to move around her off the back of the chair she was sitting in.  The man moved the snake off of her very quickly and gently-no children or snakes were harmed during these pictures!  When I asked her what she didn't like, she said the snake felt really heavy when he wasn't on the back of her chair.  As long as it was-I told her that it probably weighed as much as she does.

 Our friends Corrie and Aurora-Corrie and her husband John both work at Fluor and came to Manila from Fluor's Houston office.  Their son Alex is in Ryan's class at school.  Aurora is in the next older class from Ashley at preschool.

 We had our turn with the birds too.

 This is a caiman-large lizard, related to alligators and crocodiles and though small have a reputation for being mean-its mough is fastened closed.  Ashley thought he felt really neat though-rough, dry, and bumpy.  Behind us are a bunch of lego figures-I thought the boys would have enjoyed the legos as much as the animals here.  There were lots of lego animals all over the zoo-very neat!

 Here's Ashley with a lego penguin

 Ashley, Aurora, and Corrie pet the horse

 Ashley liked getting to sit on this one

 I thought this picture was hilarious-she looks like she is having a serious discussion with this bird-a cassowary, I think.

 All the kids in the tortoise pen were fascinated watching them walk and watching to see which ones had their heads in and out of their shells.

 I held this monkey and was trying to get Ashley to come pet its fur but it wanted to paw at Ashley's shirt and have her hold it instead of me and she didn't like that idea at all.

 What is on this little girl's head?  It's a bird-Ashley said she "was too little to do that" which made me laugh since she is constantly telling us that she is big enough to do things that she wants to do!

 This is the rope bridge we crossed-a lot of the kids were uncertain about this because it felt wobbly, was over water-which didn't look clean at all, and had some sizable gaps between some of the boards.  One of the moms said it felt like something from Indiana Jones but we made it across!

 A whole lego giraffe

 This gorilla statue reminded of the famous gorilla who lived at the Atlanta Zoo when I was a child-Willie B.

 Guess what this fascinating animal is?  It is a hippopotamus but unfortunately we checked on it several times and this bump was all we ever saw out of the water.

I know this isn't a very good picture but these are the original "tricyles" in Manila-powered by a bicycle with a "sidecar" for the passsengers to ride in-most of the ones closer to our area are powered by motorscooters.  We saw these on the way home.  It was  a fun morning field trip to the zoo!