Brookfield Zoo

I decided it was high time I went to visit my brother, Doug, who lives in Elgin, IL.  But Jan in his apartment would mean certain boredom and doom.   He couldn’t believe Doug didn’t have toys.  “What does he do?” was what he wanted to know.  So we met part-way at the Zoo.  This is apparently only 45 minutes from Doug, but about 2 hours from us.  So Jan and I left bright and early and we had a great day.  The following photos are almost all taken (except the obvious ones) by guest photographer, Doug Baxter.

  We did not watch the dolphin show, but we did see them swim around.

Petting stingrays in stingray bay.  Pretty cool.

Mental note: if  you go to the zoo, don’t take the Tram.  It’s kind of a waste of money, but it did provide a photo op:

It was easy to take photos of the monkeys because they mostly held still.  So although I don’t like monkeys very much, here are several photos:

I’m sure some of you out there are thinking that not all of these are in the monkey family (or maybe they are), but you know what I mean.  Monkeys, apes, those kinds of things.  In the fourth photo, it really seems like a very human expression and made me think of being distantly related and so forth.  But then the picking of bugs in the next photo, make me think that we may be distantly related, but I’m going to have to emphasise the “distant” part of that.

Then we move on to hoofed animals: the Addax (aka screwhorn antelope), zebra and giraffe, although I don’t think giraffes have hooves exactly.

Oh yes, and a rhino that looked as though it could have walked out if its enclosure any old time it wanted.

Then we moved on to some fierce animals:

and then some more even fiercer creatures:

I tell ya, some scarey stuff. Then we moved on to the obligatory goat petting.

Then finally the carousel and an indecision about which animal was the best:

Snake was the best.

Then some photos with Doug.

He seems to be doing quite well and we had a great time. LOOOOOOOOOng drive home.  But oh well.  That was our day.