Columbus Zoo

Monday 5-10
Poor romperoo's tire can't be fixed. We spent most of the day waiting and waiting and waiting (six hours!) for the work to be done on her car. I guess that means no trip to the prehistoric earthworks today... Hopefully we can get to it sometime this week!

After everything on the car got repaired, we headed out to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.
The new Polar Frontier has opened and we all had been promised that I would see the new animals.
There are life-sized polar bear footprints on the walkway of the zoo that lead you to the exhibit. I had fun trying to leap from paw print to paw print. These bears are HUGE!
Here is a picture of me getting sized up against a polar bear!
The polar bears have a 1.3-acre yard is specially designed to be the ultimate polar bear habitat - with lots of rocks, two pools (loaded with trout), smell ports, dig pits and shelters. The still pool is about 167,000 gallons and has areas where guests can view the bears from above, at eye-level and from below.

I started out observing the polar bears from eye level. My, those bears looked lazy. For a long time, one bear lounged on a big rock and soaked up the sun. After a giant yawn, he dived into the water with a huge splash. Then I high-tailed it down the steps to watch the bear as he swam under water.
Then the entertainment began. The bear chased the trout in pool and caught two of them right before my eyes! It was so cool! I was underneath a polar bear watching it catch its food! Afterwards the bear dived down and picked up a huge bone from a cow to gnaw on. It was fascinating to watch these animals.

We decided to continue our tour of the zoo by visiting the Brown Bears, Brutus and Buckeye. These are a pair of brother bears that stand about eight feet tall and weigh 850 pounds each, and these young Alaskan brown bears are still growing! Found as orphans in Alaska, they are now active teenagers. The brothers enjoy wrestling, arguing over toys and playing in the water and snow. Their favorite treats are large bones on which to gnaw, large plastic items for floating, balls and anything they can tear apart. Eventually, just about everything ends up in their pool to play with!
We were really excited to see that the River Otter exhibit was open. That meant one thing, romperoo explained, the new otter babies were on display! They were the cutest little things as they bumbled and romped in their nest.
I wanted to get a close-up look at the mother otter. And guess what? She wanted to get a close-up look at me! As I stared into the pool, she kept coming over and trying to paw at me! She's flip over and then come back and start scratching at the glass like crazy. Hilarious! I was an enrichment activity for an otter!


Such a fun time at the Zoo and Aquarium!
~Maggie