Real Zoos Don't Have Kitty Cats

After a few trips to the Austin Zoo (which we LOVE, but which is really more of an animal rehab center for tigers whose drug dealer owners have also been shipped off to rehab), we decided that Sophie might enjoy the "real" zoo. The one in San Antonio, with giraffes and elephants instead of kitties and chickens. So we went...and we did not see one stinkin' giraffe. But we saw elephants!

Sophie's favorites seemed to be the rhinos, the monkeys (two different monkey mommas had babies and she really liked that), and (she is her father's daughter) the snakes! We also saw hippos and a hopping kangaroo. She loved that, too. It's tough to get pictures of a kid AND a wild animal, so our best Sophie shots from this adventure are the posed pics:

The San Antonio Zoo has an amazing "Little Tots Adventure Spot" with all kinds of discovery areas like a wall of fish and a water play area and giant room of tunnels so you can first pretend to be a prairie dog...then you can poke your head up through a bubble and you really ARE in the prairie dog habitat!

But the most memorable part of the day was our close encounter with the cheetah. Okay...I guess real zoos do have kitty cats. Big ones. Hungry ones. Thank God for plexiglass ones. Precursor: We do realize that this video is wrong. We shouldn't use our child as bait. We shouldn't tease the big kitty. We shouldn't sound so nonchalant about offering up Sophie as a kitty treat. We shouldn't scare the baby for the sake of a great video. But you'll be glad we did...watch! (And just so you know, we started cracking up and Sophie's initial cries quickly turned to laughter, too. And we bought her a cheeseburger. Don't call CPS.)