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| - When in Melbourne, Australia, I had the opportunity to visit the zoo there which in turn made me think, "Hey, I've not been to the Toronto zoo in ages." The last time I was at the Toronto Zoo, I don't think my skull was completely hardened. So I decided it was time to see if any of my memories would actually hold true. I vaguely remember seeing elephants and giraffes. My mind puts them in the same pen, but that could be accounted for by the proximity of the animals on my bedroom wall when I was two. I also seemed to remember pen after pen of primates staring out at the masses eating and urinating with reckless abandon.
The first few exhibits reminded me of the first few in 'Jurassic Park' where the car pulls up to a leafy plant-filled cage where there should be an animal, and there were none. You can blame the heat there. Even holding down the job of a zoo animal where all you need to do is eat, sleep, and walk around a bit, I'd probably be hitting up a siesta at some point. Eventually, I was able to find them lounging and looking for protection against the heat, but most importantly, they were visible.
The pavilions are decently organized and seem to be appropriate to the animals they house. I'm no biologist, but the animals seem to be happy. Or at the very least indifferent to their surroundings. They're not performing the finale from "Oklahoma!", but they're not punching each other either. One thing you will find is the pavilions can be spaced apart by quite a distance. If you're up for the walk, you'll have a good one, but if not, the zoo trains can help as well. This is a great for kids and as such be warned, there will be kids. Not sure that I saw it on the calendar, but apparently I had showed up on "Incorrigible Screaming Three-Year-Old Day". Check the calendar for other special dates that hopefully won't surprise you.
What made the day was the final exhibit, a temporary stingray petting zoo. You'll be completely safe petting them as their stingers are filed down so as not to harm. Note this as well that the bulk of the stingrays seem to be somewhat domesticated and love the attention that you dish out. They will frantically swim to some arbitrary starting point along the wall of the pool and wait for you to pet them as they swim along. They're cute in a creepy-mushroom sort of way.
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