Lions, tigers and dinosaurs, oh my!

 

I took these photos yesterday from my trip to Chester Zoo.  Some day I hope to save enough money to go to Africa and see some of these animals in their natural habitat, that is one of my big, big dreams, but for now the zoo will have to do.  Plus I wanted to see the dinosaurs, which I'm pretty sure even Africa don't have.  I have a special place in my heart for animals.  Always have done, always do.  After we got home yesterday my mum told me 'Dem I haven't seen you like that in a long time.  As soon as we got into the zoo you just came to life.  I could put you in a room full of people and you wouldn't give a shit, but with animals, you're different.'  No, this probably isn't normal, but it's true that I am much more comfortable and at ease with them, than I am with humans, you know, the things from my own species...
I had a good day despite rushing around to see as much as we could because we only had two hours there.  We didn't see the zebras, giraffes, bears... etc etc.  But I'd seen the elephants, I'd seen the tigers up close, and I had seen the dinosaur exhibition which will only be there for a couple of more weeks, so I couldn't really complain.  Plus the weather was on our side for most of the day, which definitely made it better.
The elephants were my favourite, most likely because they are, pretty much my favourite creatures on this earth.  They are the first things you see as you come in, and I could have just watched them all day.  We caught them whilst they were being given a bath, which they seemed to be really enjoying.  Two of the babies actually went to the huge pond and just dunked their whole bodies in for a few seconds, which I didn't know they did.  Well, not without using their trunks for a snorkle...
We then went into the butterfly house, which is kind of surreal as you have all of these beautiful butterflies flying around you and above your head.  I couldn't capture most of them as the were constantly flying, but I did see one which had wings which looked exactly like a leaf, which was really cool.
The tigers were the most beautiful.  I've especially loved tigers ever since I watched 'Two Brothers' years and years ago.  There were three which I saw, and from their sizes I assumed one was the mother and the other two were her cubs.  Really, really big cubs... They were really playful and kept play fighting their mum, which was really cute.  I couldn't believe I got as close to one as I did when it came right up the fence.
On to the dinosaurs now... Man, I am such a dinosaur geek.  As a kid I had an insane amount of toys, and 'The Land Before Time' movies were just my favourite.  Still are, actually, and my DVD box set is one of my best possessions.  I think most of them were life-size models, including the T-Rex which was just crazy, but the model of the Long Neck (much easier than saying Brachiosaurus, you see) which have always been my favourite, was actually three times smaller than it would have been in real life.  This is insane.  The models actually moved and made noises, which was a great touch, some of them even spat out water at you.  Whilst I'm geeking out over dinosaurs, I might as well say I found out yesterday that a 'Jurassic Park 4' is going to be made, SO excited yo.
And to finish off, the monkeys.  They had a few different types, the orangutans were really good to see.  The last ones we saw with the face beards were slightly crazy and chasing each other everywhere.  We did get to see a mother with her brand new baby (see last picture) which had the cutest, smallest face.  Another monkey actually came up to it and started stroking the baby's head.  HEART. MELTING.  Then in the background we saw a monkey run up to another monkey, bent it over, and started having sex right then and there.  We took that as our sign to leave.

The End.