Visiting my happy place

You know every now and then you do something that just takes you back to when you were a kid and you get as excited about it as if you were still that young?  Well that's what happened to me on Sunday.

We went to the zoo.

And by we I mean myself, the two daughters, and Chia and her daughter.  It was awesome.

I guess I appreciate the simple things in life and we had engineered our arrival to coincide with a giraffe encounter.  I didn't actually know what this meant but I figured it would be interesting and seeing we're travelling in especially for this trip, we should make the effort to see things like this.

It turned out to be a mass organised giraffe feeding, how cool is that?  We all got given our pieces of celery and waited in line to hold our offerings to the resident male giraffe and his absolutely obscenely huge tongue.

It was quick, simple, no touching was allowed but what a thrill.  I was hooked.

I knew that there was an elephant encounter soon and we shimmied our way over, finding a great position at the front of the seating.  I was hoping for another feeding and yes, a bucket of fruit was coming around for the people.

Elephants are amazing.  I'm not sure quite what I love about them but I have been an elephant fanatic since I was a little girl and I just can't shake the habit.

We waited patiently for the fruit lady and when she got to us I didn't get any fruit even though I had my hand out.  Crushed!  I asked about it and she informed me that the fruit was getting low and she was focusing on making sure all the kids got a piece first.

Oh, ..I suppose, but I'm pretty sure there was no one as excited about this prospect as I was and it was a rather depressing awakening to the fact that I had to accept it as the adult I was.  Damn it.  [I may have cursed other peoples kids silenty under my breath or I may not have..]

Anyway, lovely lady that she was, she remembered me and came back after she'd seen to all the kids.  I wanted to hug her.

So we all waited and the elephant walked slowly down the ranks, raising her trunk every few inches for another juicy morsel.  I loved the way she sniffed out the pieces, I loved feeding her the fruit but I especially loved giving her ears, back and side a scratch as she plodded onwards.

It didn't matter if all the other animals were hiding for the rest of the day, I think I would have been well satisfied after that but we ended up having one of the most amazing days for animal encounters I can remember.

The glorious male sumatran tiger walked straight up to us, stood about 1 foot away (through a glass barrier), and stretched.  I was in love, what a magnificent beast.

The red panda, the siamangs, seals, meerkats, cheetahs and orangutans all got very close as well and the hippos were feeding so we saw their gloriously chubby sumo fat roles around their legs before they entered the water and gracefully swam about.

Animals are cool and have the power to take you to a very happy place.  Especially since my body gave out later that night and I had a fever for the next few days, so that happy place lingered on.

But I fed and touched the elephant!