Or so we thought...
From the parking lot, the Virginia Zoo looks great! There is a beautiful & meticulously landscaped entrance. There were a ton of people visiting and we were excited. I will readily admit, I'm always a little hesitant visiting zoos because some zoos make me sad. Seriously sad.
We enter the park and start walking. We continue to walk. More walking. We walk some more while we begin to wonder out loud where the animals might be. Eventually, we get to some exhibits. As we are walking around, we overhear the following conversation:
Father: "If Daddy had a gun, we'd be havin' anterlope tonight for supper."
Son: "I wanna try giraffe!"This would have been funny if, say, Chris had said this because...hahaha...we don't actually own any firearms or...hahaha...hunt. So, we would be JOKING!!! It's not so funny when the person saying it is salivating & getting excited about the possibility of shooting some big game kept in a pen for supper.
We keep walking in the hopes of seeing some more animals. I would have taken more pictures but it was really difficult to get a good, unobstructed view.
We did find one exhibit where the captives seemed happy.
So, by this time, Chris & I are both lamenting the fact that we actually spent $20 to visit this place. Really, that money would have been better spent at the county fair. They have more animals. They also have fried things like pickles, dough, snickers bars, etc. Granted, the county fair wouldn't have this:
Although, I don't remember the animals at the county fair looking this sad:
I started singing "Hang Down Your Head, Tom Turkey" without even realizing it. C'mon...that's funny.
What wasn't funny was the Reptile House. Chris was extremely excited because he has a huge affinity for poison dart frogs and, after all, how hard is it to fill a bunch of tanks with some nice reptilians? Well, evidently it is really hard for the Virginia Zoo. Chris was devastated because we spent the next 5 minutes walking through what was more like a dark hallway with square pieces of glass that sometimes had something lurking darkly behind it than an educational exhibit of the Earth's splendid frogs and snakes.*
In closing, the picture below pretty much sums up the zoo and our nice afternoon.
*Chris's addition!
