The National Zoo

 The National Zoo

Izzy

8/14/2021

    Today we got to visit the National Zoo. We got there pretty early when it wasn’t too crowded. First we went to see the Pandas and went on the Asia trail. We saw two otters that were running around their enclosure and one was waiting at the window that the zoo keepers open, probably waiting for food. We saw a Fishing cat and some Asian Elephants before we went into the Panda building. They were all sleeping inside - two adults and a baby who is about to turn 1 year old. They were all so cute just lying there. 

    We went on the North America trail and saw a cute beaver eating veggies. We also saw some Harbor Seals and California Sea Lions (pictured below) - one of the sea lions was posing right at the fence of the enclosure which was funny. We saw an Andean Bear climb all the way up it’s tree so that it was hiding in the leaves. 

                        

    Next we saw some cool amphibians. There were lots of frogs - we saw a lot of small colorful poison frogs but we also saw an African Clawed frog swimming around. They had weird looking eyes. Later in the Reptile house we saw lots of turtles too. My favorite was the Alligator Snapping Turtle which was looking right at me. Other cool turtles we saw were the Matamata Turtle which had a funny snout and the Fly River Turtle which looked more like a sea turtle.

                      

The Matamata Turtle

The Fly River Turtle

    We got to see a Tiger and a Lion. The Tiger was more alert and it got up to walk around but the Lion was just relaxing. He was lying on his back, unbothered even with all those people staring at him. There was an outdoor enclosure for lemurs and we saw them run around and jump into the trees. There was a pond at the bottom and I counted over 30 turtles in it! I also saw one duck and one tortoise with them. In the Great Ape house we got to see some Gorillas and Orangutans. There was a baby Orangutan that was eating with one of the adults and then went to play in the bubble bath. It was a really fun trip to the zoo!

The baby Orangutan