On Wednesday morning I was at the zoo by 9 a.m. to meet up with all of the 7th graders from Paige's school. Lucky for me I was only in charge of these three sweet girls..from left Paige, Tiffany and Lauren. I couldn't ask for more polite or friendly girls to spend five hours at the zoo with, plus they put up with all my photo taking pretty well too.
I am only posting half of the zoo pictures tonight because it is getting late and I have had a long day...so check back in the next day or so for kangaroos, penguins and the cutest baby chimp ever.

Introducing Hanna the daughter of the late great Fluffy.

Look baby (he just turned 2) Beco is getting his tusk!

Just look at those paws! They look so powerful yet soft and fluffy at the same time.
Oh and looks he's sticking his tongue out...I seemed to catch quite a few pictures of various animal tongues today. Luckily none of the kids stuck theirs out at me as I was snapping their pictures...they just roll their eyes instead!

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The lion family was in the North East corner of their pen and for taking pictures of them it doesn't get better than that. I beats trying to take picture from above and getting shots of the tops or backs of their heads. I even managed to blur the fence out for the photo below. Go Nikon...you make me look so good!

When we arrived at the Mexican wolf exhibit we spotted two of them lounging in the grass about 30 feet from the exhibits window. I snapped a few photos through the dirty glass window hoping they would turn out okay. Then to my surprise one of the wolfs got up and ventured over for his close ups. I love how quick our camera is. It was fun to catch the wolf licking his lips and then immediately afterwards I caught this expression below. The funny thing about this is Rebel makes the same face after he licks his lips. Must be a canine thing.

The night before we went to the zoo a big thunderstorm rolled through with a ton of rain. The otters were making good use of the mud by having a spa day. They would roll around in the mud and squeak at each other then run and dive into their pool. It was fun watching them dive into the water and we could see the mud washing off of them in brown streaks. It pretty much muddled the water so I only took one halfway decent shot of them swimming.

I was pleasantly surprised that these polar bear pics came out so well, as I shot them through a smudged up window. When I first started snapping the two polar bears were just lounging around. Then one of the sisters went over to a rock and started licking it so this enticed the other sister to go check out the tasty rock. So that is what lead to the last photo of them mouthing at each other. Typical sisters!

I took this shot of the Timber Wolf through the dirty glass viewing area and I was surprised that it turned out halfway decent. I wonder if the folks at the zoo would freak out if I brought some windex and paper towels next time so I can clean their windows!

I love this photo below...look at the soul of this wolf... so intensely beautiful.

Check back soon for part 2 of the 7th grade field trip to the zoo.