A Trip to the Zoo

Well, I’ve been nursing my knee injury for about two weeks now and I’ve been suffering from a severe case of cabin fever. Jessica, my girlfriend who was probably fed up with my attitude, finally demanded that we leave the house. So she took me to the Cape May Zoo. I love this zoo, mostly because it isn’t crowded, even on busy days. They have an impressive number of species for your viewing pleasure, including all of the kid favorites: a lion, cheetahs, giraffes, black bears, and zebras! It was good to get away from the house for a few hours.

At the front of the zoo, there was a pen for some of the zoos newest arrivals: two pot-bellied pigs. Jessica instantly fell in love. They were “snorting” and prancing around their little pen. Every once and a while they would come up to the fence and stand on their hind legs so they could smell your feet and your hands. Jessica would have been quite content to put one of them in her purse and take him home.

Now, I’ve been to the Cape May Zoo quite a few times and over the years I’ve come to notice that other than the lone male lion, the big cats at the zoo are quite happy to just sleep and show no signs of life. Yesterday, this was not the case. We got to see a cheetah speed along its fence trying to catch a guinea hen in the adjacent pen. They are fast, TV shows do no justice for these animals. Seeing them run in person is amazing. Also, we got to see the lion roar! It was incredible. The sound is loud enough to be heard throughout the park. We also got to see an ocelot roam his pen, a sleepy leopard, and pooped bobcat.

I love zoos; they are a great place for photographing “wild” animals. Jessica and I have done some traveling and we usually work in the local zoos and aquariums in our journeys. Our list now includes: Baltimore Aquarium, Cape May Zoo, Tampa Bay Aquarium, San Diego Zoo, San Diego Wild Animal Park, and Sea World San Diego. So if you like the shows on the National Geographic channel where you journey out into the savanna for a rare glimpse at some amazing creatures, don’t think that you have to spend thousands on an African expedition. You’d be surprised at the number of photographic opportunities awaiting you at your local zoo.

This entry was posted on 30. March 2008 at 16:31 and is filed under Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.