Denver 2019 day 5 Nil sine Teporis Torporibus Touchilimo

June 24 2019

Our second shot at making the opening of Zoo Extra Magic Hours evaporated in having to get up too early for that, but in time to be at the pool opening to rescue Anabelle’s watch.  I passed out for a bit after returning, and by the time we got ourselves together and navigated weekday morning traffic, we arrived to enjoy about a minute and a half of the members only extraness.

The reggae version of “Hakuna Matata” playing to mark our arrival was a nice touch.

We peeked in to see the hyenas strolling around, because hyenas, as I may have mentioned, are awesome.  Then we strolled ourselves right along water buffalo way. 

The gerenuk antelope were standing up, which was a bit unusual, but the kangaroos and cheetahs were in the exact same spots they were when we left.

There’s something to be said for being too well cared for.

Crossing in front of what Anabelle referred to as “lesser sheep” we checked out the inside of the pachyderm house. Both the rhino and hippo were available for close up viewing as they were prepared for the day. The hippo greeted us with some impressive bellowing and splashing. It’s nice to be appreciated.

Exiting the other side, we needed to do a vulture check and learned that these were separate from the rest due to being rescue animals with broken wings. It also explained why they were in the wide open area outside the pachyderm house instead of some big old cage.

Sometimes “Why don't the birds fly out” is less about comfort and more about injury.

Up at the top of the zoo we checked at the tapir exhibit and found two of them.

A Ta-Pair, if you will.

See? Hysterical.

With an espanol howdy to the llamas once more, we greeted the emerging penguins outside Bird World. 

The building itself was closed.  Not permanently, as it would be on October first, however.  It didn’t open until the more normal New York Zoo time of Ten AM.

This allowed us to walk around the outside and find the condor next to the eagles we somehow missed last time.  From over by the carousel they were playing music from Disney’s Tarzan.  Anabelle and I yelling, “Copyright infringement, WOO!”  was probably a faux pas.

With warm and dry weather for the day, it would be the first of many trips where there would be no need to send me running back out of the zoo to the car…

Hey, did you remember to put on bug spray?

And off I went.

Again, the deceptive scale of the zoo meant it wasn't too bad and it was nice of the residents of Monkey Island to run over the shore and say hi to me. 

The rhino did too, and I got to see a different hand stamp this day compared to Friday too.

On my way back, to share in unnecessary activity, the cheetah left its roof for once and went into the little house.

The big advantage of this delay is it forced our arrival time at the monkey house to Ten AM, when it also opened.  I’m beginning to think the “earlier than New York” opening time isn’t a functional thing out there. It’s just the exercise crazy, early risers expect to be able to go somewhere.

Anyway, we saw monkeys, and the gorilla, orangutan and mandrill families were all outside.  This was much more momentous than we thought since the gorilla family moved to Jacksonville in the early fall, leaving the bachelor group alone.  I’m really becoming less of a fan of following zoos on social media.

In celebration of Pigeon’s fantastic break out dancing career the passel…

That seems wrong, but the internet says so, it must be true.

The passel of red river hogs had a giant squeal party for him that Anabelle joined in on.

Exiting primate land we went through the Nurture Trail.  We had no real extra affinity for those animals, but it was shady.  For the first time ever, we noticed the path behind Bird World and found the cassowary, a dangerous large flightless multicolored extremely irritable bird with muscular legs and dromaeosaur like clawed feet. COOL!

And a kea, an average sized New Zealand parrot.

Eh.

But hey!  Cassowary! Woo!

Returning at a more reasonable hour, Bird World was open, allowing Anabelle to complain that the kookaburra did not pose for her as well as the Bronx Zoo one.

We may be prejudiced…a tad.

The sloths were in a sloth pile, but with the later activity planned, we didn't hang around and look at it too long.

Though we did take pictures of the pretty, shiny blue cotinga bird…again…like every other time.

The tapir hooted a hello to his biggest fan as we left the bird area and detoured to watch the hippo play with a ball.  We’re prejudiced, but we’re still suckers for large animals not in our native zoo. 

Over on hoofed mammal way, the big antelope was bigly anteloping...

Very educational to have around.

A sleeping Indian rhino prompted Rosa, who was having word swap issues over the whole trip with rhinos and hippos to confusedly ask, “Where’s the horn?”  Apparently there are other large mammals besides myself who sleep on their faces.

I was watching the gibbons come out of their little house, when Rosa yelled “ELEPHANT!” and I nearly jumped clean into the gibbon enclosure.

We’re often unintentionally hysterical as well.

We had a cool encounter in the “Other Stuff That Lives Near Elephants” house.  (I’m paraphrasing.)  We were over watching the exceptionally active fisher cats when a little girl started a conversation with the hornbill.

I didn’t know they taught screeching jungle avian in pre-school.

Rosa provided voiceovers (hysterical) for a monitor lizard climbing the glass who clearly wanted to be free.  Outside the elephant was doing a rumba. 

Perhaps I should turn off autocorrect when I know I’m going to take notes while walking…

Exiting into hoofed mammal way again, we emerged at the kudu.  Right next door was a collection of wild horse relatives that could only be referred to as a “wild ass party.”

Educational and Hysterical.

We did get to see our old friend from the Bronx, Yuri the tiger.  There was a keeper talk going on, letting us learn about his adjustment to his new home and hopefully future mate, how native to Siberia big cats get to go stay inside if they want on hot days, and how his lady to be grabbed a peacock the other day.

I bet those brightly colored feathered zoo rats thought bulking up and slowing down due to subsisting on dropped french fries would be fine now that they were protected from that circle of life thing.

The bull sea lion was extra loud as we passed up on Tropical Paradise. Anabelle has a “one a day” limit on aquariums.  The bears weren’t out, but at least one hadn’t died yet.  (Really becoming not a fan of zoo social media)

Dobby the giraffe wandered over to see us, as did some zebras.  Woo!  The mongeese and porcupineese were sleeping in the shade, however.  (woo.)

I had a crazy hungry indecisive breakdown (because…me) over at the Asia food stand we talked about trying earlier, and by this point food was a necessity. Luckily the Denver Zoo cafeteria is always awesome. 

Fueled up, we popped in on the hyenas in various states of activity before taking one last singing stroll down Water Buffalo Lane.

The cheetah came out and presented one final fastest land animal moon.

On the way to take some artsy photos of the “Sleepy Hippo in Repose” there was a squirrel on the trail where a photographer with a giant lens was kneeling to get a good shot of him.

We spotted the rodent between two of the Big Five African animals and yelled “WHOAH A SQUIRREL!!!” sending the photographer into spasms of laughter.

See? Hysterical.

We waved goodbye to the rhino, and the emu who had a mixed living arrangement with the kangaroos, much to his mother’s chagrin no doubt.

Anabelle bid a last farewell to the ground hornbill and we hit the Gift Shop.

It was playing, “Let it Go.”

Copyright infringement for proper theming is one thing, but come on! That song isn’t even animal related!

The second half of our animal filled day would be the Denver Aquarium, and the journey there through crowded city streets was accompanied by the dancing styles of Pigeon the red river hog. How we didn't leave a trail of accidents behind us is a miracle for the ages.

For the animal meet and greet we had to enter the back of the aquarium, like our first trip, but on purpose this time. Anabelle acquired a new large eyed sloth to add to her family.  Pigeon would maintain dance duties however.  The giant grouper that swam to the bar window to bid us farewell on our last visit welcomed us into the waiting area.  After a short bit, some volunteers had us sign the “we won’t sue if the sloth eats us” form, and brought us and several other families into a back room.

There the taller than me, and more intricately tattooed, Anika was our host, while Patty was the handler to Aspen the sloth.  He hung on a little tree while we learned cool slothy facts.  

The vegetation they eat is extremely low in nutritional value, accounting for their general lethargy.  Like Pandas they often fall asleep while eating.  Judging from my sister’s behavior when we were kids, Pea Soup must be low in nutritional value.

We learned their main predator is the awesomely huge harpy eagle.  Well, we pseudo learned that because I couldn’t remember which of the harpy or monkey eating eagle lived in South America and which lived in Africa, blowing a chance to display my educational bucket like head in public.

In the “hysterical facts for nine year olds…and me” category: sloths cannot pass wind, giving them permanent fart breath.  Fun!

We got to feed him bits of lettuce, take pictures with him and pet him. Sloths look bristly, but without the normal algae that grows in sloth fur (there was some bucket tipping) he felt remarkably soft.

Cool fact:  He looked toward the cameras for photos and selfies. When I asked if they trained him to focus like that, the answer was, “No, he just likes them.”

Aspen also made a couple of paintings while we were there, which Anika and Patty told us they sell to help support sloths in the wild. Being that Anabelle constantly called this “the best day of my life” we naturally bought the painting, along with the tote bag and little stuffed sloth that came with it.  Anabelle named the sloth “Alamo” which is Spanish for Aspen. (Once again teaching me more than I knew before about place names.)

I couldn’t remember the big eyed sloth’s name was the obvious “Aquaria”, but I remembered the Alamo!!

Hysterical.

Because we had signed up for one animal meeting, we got a deal on a second one.  Thanks to general strangeness of the animal, it was a super deal!

This meeting was in “Critter Canyon” in the first big habitat area of the aquarium proper.  We hung around looking at otter antics making the time fly by for our animal appointment.  Since the place is owned by the Rainforest Cafe people there are a few animatronics mixed in. 

The robot eagle had a distinctive cry leading Anabelle to yell, “It’s Mothra!!” (Hysterical)  We waited around with the local pikes and catfish until Patty and Anika showed up with a new animal transport, and switched roles.

Nobody else signed up, so we got personal time with Uni the binturong (aka a bearcat- a large civet). It was an adorable if odd looking animal. Knowing only that they’re from Asian rainforests, and they’re nocturnal, based on seeing them in the Bronx Zoo’s Jungle World for years; put me far ahead of most guests, continuing our trend of being educational.

Again we got to see the animal in a small room, learn about it, pet it, and high five her.  I had a problem with the high fiving because she kept trying to climb on me, apparently because I was male. Cool fact: they have a remarkably heavy tail that is still semi-prehensile. Translation, they can’t hang by it, but though it weighs as much as a tube of sand (they had one to demonstrate) she could still grab with it.

Coolest fact: she smelled like buttered popcorn. Coolest extra fact: since they evolved in a rain forest, water has an amplifying effect.  The handlers said this meant if they got home and smelled a little like popcorn, when they took a shower to rinse it off the scent became overwhelming.

We finished the second of two awesome experiences, allowing Anabelle to put up with the rest of the aquarium for me.   The first oversize tank had a huge number of sturgeons.  (I know, dull, but I like fish. Woo!)

Because she stood by me at the tank, I stood by Anabelle at the flash flood demonstration.  Thanks to the randomness of water flow, what had been a spritz on past visits was a good old fashioned soaking.

woo.

(Though Rosa and Anabelle did categorize this as hysterical.)

The next area was based on the Sea of Cortez, where we saw fish (woo!) and a Rock Lobster, leading me into a musical moment possibly more embarrassing than “That’s a Moray.”

Anabelle got a respite not connected to me getting saturated in the desert section, since it's mostly land animals in terrariums.  We did catch feeding time for one of the group of tigers from Washington D.C. that inexplicably lives in that place. 

The viewing was so close and awesome we didn’t bother questioning its relevance this time.

Then the big tank section started.  I was trying to get a good look at the underside of some rays, and smacked my head directly into the curved glass in the first room…

Both hysterical (to others) and educational (as a bad example)

This was extremely embarrassing since I knew full well that the second room was a glass tunnel making viewing in all directions, including up, much easier.  A tarpon swam by and Rosa asked what the “Robocop Fish” was.  I shall be petitioning the national piscatorial society to change its name officially. 

For reasons not in the bucket, the rays were all spitting bits of gravel out of their mouths, leaving Hansel and Gretel like trails.  Whatever the reason it made a passing little kid extremely happy.

Knowing we’d eat with them later, we didn’t hang around for the official mermaid show, instead heading over to the shark tank. WOO! 

Thought most of the time was focused on “turtle quest” as the shelled ones spent their time hiding in the back and at the window edges. Anabelle graciously spent some time over with the jellyfish while I was having a moment.

In the last section of independent tanks, I played the “fish on my head game” going into the bubble.  Then I played the old man trying to get off the floor game ,messed up my knees and whacked my head again.

The octopus was, as always, awesome! WOO!

The petting tank had cownose rays (the small flappy ones) and southern stingrays (the big wubba wubba on the bottom ones) Anabelle and I hung there a bit and pet a few. (Only the flappy ones for her.)

Dinner was as excellent as it always there, and equally as always we saved room for dessert.  More additionally as always, Mermaids swam around to Disney music, doing infringy things.

They (my wife and daughter, not the mermaids, that would smudge the glass) shared a chocolate berry cake which was really good. I finally went for it (with my family basically ordering it for me) and got the kid’s meal giant “paint your own” shark shaped rice crispy treat.

I never noticed the dish for the treat is shaped like an artist’s pallet. That’s embarrassing. Especially since I didn't notice until I finished eating it while paint-brushing colored flavors onto the shark.

There were three colors of sauce to paint on: brown blue and orange.  Their corresponding flavors were chocolate…um, blue and orange.

Basically, liquid Pez.

We drove home with Pigeon giving some of his most epic dance performances to date featuring Abba’s “Dancing Queen,” “Shiny” from Moana, and Garth Brooks’s “Two Pina Coladas.”  Yes, there were some puzzled looks on rush hour packed Highway 70 in Denver that day.

Back home Rosa iced her foot while Anabelle and I went for a walk. She did a bunch of jump rope tricks that would have gotten me tangled up and hit in the head (again) with a handle even at her age.  We saw a bunch more bunnies but no other wildlife; this despite the multiple coyote warning signs.  These were about as accurate (we didn't see any) and helpful (hey, this wild animal is around! - with no explanation what to do) as the rattlesnake signs at Dinosaur Ridge.

We collected Rosa to go for the nightly Hot Tub Trivia time and knee and foot soak. For the first time ever, both the hot tub and the pool were mobbed.  More amazingly, they all seemed to be from one family. Luckily they were an excessively nice family, and the matriarch made the kids choose between the hot tub and pool, to leave one open for other people.

Soaked and trivia-ed, we went home for shower, my flight check in and packing.  We had a couple night snacks while engaging in more Disney Trivia. With the trip coming up, that mode was near constant.   I read Anabelle some blog posts, and we crashed for the night.

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