Potter Park Zoo

The clematis have bloomed. All three shades of purple, actually!

On the fourth of July, I had the day off and my brother and his girlfriend had come into town to go to the Toledo zoo. I got a little jealous and decided that I wanted to go to the zoo and it wasn’t fair.

Cue Veruca Salt.

So we went to the zoo.

It was quite a bit of fun and I really enjoyed it, despite all of the crazy mosquitoes and biting flies.

When you enter the zoo, there’s a gift shop on the left with this cute little sign outside of it that I almost died over. SO CUTE!

To the right is the former home of the coral reef exhibit that I had gotten really excited about while reading Yelp reviews on our hour drive up to the zoo, only to get there and find it inexplicably closed forever. Sad face.

There were super cute mangy arctic foxes (they were shedding their white winter coats for summer) next to the ADORABLE otters. Apparently there were 6 of them, but they had to put them out in threes because one was violent.

Over at the petting zoo, the pygmy goats were hanging out like… goats. One decided to scratch his belly on a log. I regret not going in and petting the goats.

Across the way were some llamas. Doing llama things.

It was interesting to see a black rhino, considering I’d only ever seen white ones at the Detroit zoo. It gets me all excited to see new animals at all the other zoos.

What I’m not excited about? PEACOCKS.

Yes, they’re pretty, but oh. my. god. I don’t know what it’s called when birds are trying to get it on, but Potter Park Zoo has a LOT of peacocks who are DEFINITELY trying to get some.

I got to see a white peacock close up for the first time, too.

The poor peahens were all stuck up on top of everything while the peacocks freaked out and screamed all day.

I could not get enough of these meerkats, though. They are the most ridiculous, expressive animals in the world and I love them.

This little guy on the lookout was the best of all, and later when they all started digging holes and lounging in the cool sand, people stopped by in droves to giggle at how adorable they are.

Around the corner, the mongoose were strutting their stuff in their sandy little enclosure.

This one was my favorite. WORK IT!

Inside the bird and amphibian house, this iguana was being all iguana-y and chilling on a log.

And in the middle of it all, there were three tigers. One of them outside:

And three of them inside behind glass. We were able to get closer to the tigers than I ever had been and it was really exciting!

The king vulture was quite possibly my favorite animal at the zoo. He reminded me so much of Friar Tuck from Robin Hood. I swear I almost broke into his enclosure and took him home.

He will be mine and I will call him Friar and I will love him and squeeze him and hold him…

I guess I can’t bring home a vulture, can I?

I almost forgot to add these little gems to the story. Throughout the park, there’s these animal cutouts that you put your face in (I’m sure there’s a name for them) and we took pictures in the tiger one. Me…

Aaaaaaaand my charming mom:

The tigress.

Can you tell we’re taking photos specifically to scrapbook?