The family activity that everybody was up for was visiting the zoo. All the kids wanted to. I tagged along because I remember the experience well. I was curious about what parts of it would be different for them.

  

Looking at leopards and zebras felt a lot like it had more than a generation ago.

     

Here and there around the Zoo there were red shirts like this guy. They were Friends of the National Zoo (pronounced "FONZ"), volunteers whose job was to add to the experience of visiting. This guy had a skull and pelt similar to the animal behind the bars behind him. He was showing kids how the skull was optimized for rooting and what the pelt felt like.

Not sure they had volunteers back then, but I remember strangers saying interesting things, so they could have had them. I think the panda up a tree is the one named Tian Tian. For sure there were no pandas back then.

  

The panda exhibit was the only one where I remember seeing a human in the next room watching them almost like a more complicated zoo animal.

     

Funny how much some monkeys resemble squirrels.

  

     

I vividly remember some guy pointing at some ape and saying to the young woman he was with "that's your cousin!" Don't think it was this particular inmate, but I didn't have my camera out at that moment.

  

Going into the reptile house my sister and I shared some kind of joke about the reptilian nature of some politicians.

     

The kids enjoyed the Ferris wheel at least as much as they enjoyed seeing the exotic wildlife.

  

Near the tiger pen there was a panel explaining similarities and differences between tigers and humans. Things like all mothers clean, carry and feed their kids until they can take care of themselves. I was struck by one about schooling. Its hard for me to believe a tiger won't absorb a good idea if s/he sees someone else do it. Pretty sure it's a rare fool that wants to teach an adult tiger anything though.

     

Thank you Aiden for taking the lion pictures. Listening to the roaring I realized that the reason they are called lions is because the roar sounds a lot like he's saying "liioooon!"

  

I took both of these pictures standing in about the same place. Kids were having a great time playing in the prairie dog warren type play structure on my left, and real prairie dogs were playing in the habitat to my right. Katie was kind of bummed that she was too tall to play in the prairie dog town. Liam, Aiden, and Treslyn had so much fun!

  

  

Too bad they didn't have any bison. I vividly remember seeing them there when we visited back in the '60s.

  

Yup. Everybody was tired after a day of running around the zoo.