Off to the Zoo

Have you ever had one of those overwhelmingly magical experiences, that give you understanding that you never before truly had?  

I'm not sure if I have had before but on Wednesday the Wellington Zoo was $5 entry so my friends, Ellie, Lexy, Jake and I couldn’t turn it down so off we went. Really, I don't care what anyone say's the zoo is fun at any age + we got a free red panda poster, so you can't really beat it! Some of the animal's were quite funny and lapped up the attention and it was quite cute, especially these little Kune Kune pigs that posed in the sunlight for multiple photographs.

Sweet aren’t they?  

At 12.30 each day the Zoo does the giraffe feeding and everyone get's a small stick of leaves and then they come up with their long purple tongues and pull the foliage out of you hand. Anyway I absolutely had to do this! Luckily there were lots and lots of people all scrambling to do this so the giraffe was around for a long time, and up close she (or he) was stunning! Their eyes are so beautiful and gentle, so after feeding her and getting accidentally licked I was able to touch her face and give her a stroke. It was so amazing, she was very soft and my heart beat wildly at excitement of actually touching a giraffe. I well recommend it!

Anyway, this magical moment that I was writing about at the beginning was not being able to stroke a giraffe it was actually at the Baboon enclosure of all places. Now baboons are quite cute when they’re little and they are also much more trusting. So while we were standing at the glass the most gorgeous baby baboon slowly make's it's way closer and closer to us until it's sitting on the ledge on the other side of glass. I have no idea why I did it but I put my hand of the glass right beside the little monkey (!) And, oh gosh it was so cute and amazing and special because it put it's hand right atop of mine on the glass!!!

He/She took her hand away and I mine, stupidly though I did it again and the baboon did it again too. Luckily my friend Lexy managed to get a picture just before the mum decided to come over and bang very angrily on the glass at me! I'm not quite sure what startled the baby to call it's mum over because there were a lot of people milled around, or it may have simply had enough. Needless to say I jumped out of my skin and moved rapidly backwards. However the experience of being so close with the baby baboon and seeing it's intelligence was so amazing that the mother's attempt to protect her baby didn’t dampen the moment at all.

The only downer to the day was that Sean the Sun Bear had decided to stay in hidden in his hut, and that I found that they no longer have Zebra's. But apart from that the day was pretty perfect and I think next year if they do $5 Winter Wednesday's I'll definitely go again!Anyway, That's me for now.

Lots of Love

                Audrey Megan

P.S. The photos are a mixture of both film and digital, taken by Jake, Lexy and I.