Kansas City Zoo
June 20th, 2004
I’ve been wanting to go to the zoo for several years now (starting back in Utah) and just never got around to it. So Friday night I decided that we’d go to the Kansas City Zoo on Saturday morning… Weather was supposed to be in the upper 60′s and overcast the whole day so figured it would probably be one of the last nice weekends before the summer heat came.
The zoo is layed out kind of in continents. You have baboons in one area, chimps in another gorillas in another, so it’s kinda weird not being able to see all the similar kind of animals at once, but also kinda interesting to see what is from where.
Overall it was a fun day, with a LOT of walking. I won’t go over each little detail but there were two that were really cool. First was a bird show that we went to watch while waiting for the second thing. I know, bird show shmird show… which was kinda what I thought going into it. During the show they asked for two adult volunteers and if they had a camera all the better. So I held mine up and got picked. We were told to go sit on these chairs. Then they bring out this big ole owl that they are going to send to a stand that is inches behind us. Luckily my camera has video, so I switched to that thinking it would be cooler to get the full action instead of one shot at a picture that I would probably miss. I wasn’t mistaken… this huge owl comes flying at us and lands basically on our heads. Having it come right at the camera is pretty sweet. Then they sent it off to another stand across the crowd, and then back to us, before going back up to the stage.
The second part was the best. They have a cage full of lorikeets that they allow 25 or so people into feed every hour. They give you a small plastic container of nectar (which is the majority of their diet) and you just hold it in your hand. You walk into the cage and they just come right up and land on your hand to start eating. There were some people that had 4 on each arm, Kaylene (my wife) had one keep landing on her head. The most I got was 3 on one arm, but had several on my shoulders a couple times. We hung out for like 20 minutes just having these beautiful rainbow colored birds flying all around and landing on us just to check things out. It was such a cool experience and worth the price of admission itself. It may be a worth a return trip to go do that again when it’s not overcast just to get some better shots with the brighter light.
The rest of the zoo was pretty cool, got some other cool shots. A large part of me wanting to go was to get some fun pictures and to play with the camera which I seem to be wanting to do more and more lately. They had a number of walk through bird aviaries which was nice to be able to get the pics without glass or wire between us. The kangaroos are just out in a field where they could walk up to you if they wanted (but naturally don’t).
Several times we had the whole “is a zoo cruel?” discussion as we would run into a particularly pathetic looking animal in a bland cage. It seems the “big ticket” animals get it pretty good, and a few others just get the shaft. We still don’t know how we feel about it, but it was just sad to see a few animals in a bad setting. While others seemed to be just fine, and you never know the back story of how maybe these particular specimens would have already died were it not for human intervention.
Anyway… good times were had and to anyone in the area, I highly recommend a visit for the lorikeet feeding alone. It was a blast and we will enjoy the pictures and video for some time.
Entry Filed under: Outings