The boys love to visit the animals, and since I had my internship there in undergraduate school, I have developed a pretty good system to get us through the zoo quickly while hitting all the "popular" animals yet avoiding the big crowds. Amazingly, I still remember feeding times for certain animals, so we time it to hit the exhibit right when the critters have been fed.
We did our typical stops ... elephants, giraffes, monkeys, lions, gorillas, big cats, tropical birds, etc.
The boys were wearing their alligator shirts, so we made sure to stop by the alligator to say hi.
When we came to the bear exhibits, we were the only ones there. The keeper was still getting the areas ready, and all the bears were up and about.
We got to the polar bear exhibit and were disappointed that there was already a crowd in the underwater viewing area. Two of the polar bears were sleeping, and Icee, my favorite polar bear, was swimming around but didn't seem too interested in anybody and wasn't coming very close to the glass. We almost turned around and headed out, but for some reason we decided to stay.
Once there was a clear spot, we put all three boys up on the cave wall next to the glass. What happened next was utterly cool ... Icee came right over to where the boys were, put her nose up against the glass as to give them a bear kiss, and then swam up the glass wall.
She did this several times, and the crowd around us was itching to get their kids up on the glass wall for their turn with Icee, so we took the boys away so other kids could have a turn.
But as soon as the boys were gone, so was Icee. She swam away and rested on her log. She didn't do the glass wall drive-by for anyone else.
It's probably a fluke, but still a really kickin' cool fluke that the boys loved.
Hmmmm ... maybe we will adopt a polar bear for the boys for their birthday?
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