Biblical Zoo!

As silly the idea of college students going to a zoo, people raved about it over the semester. So I sort of just waited around for someone who might want to go with me. And Julianna called on Thursday morning to see if I'd like to join her. I was so excited- I hadn't seen her in two or three weeks! I love her- she's a sweetie. So we coordinated the timing of the buses so she'd get on the same bus as me since she was living in Ramat Eshkol in her grandmother's apartment.

The ride felt like forever but it wasn't too bad, only a little over half hour to the other end of Jerusalem to this pretty isolated area in the valley. We paid our way in with our student IDs. First, we saw little animals like little monkeys, snakes, rodents, and the like. The next exhibit contained my least favorite animals- birds. I have a huge phobia of

birds, especially if they're just sitting on something other than the ground or flying. I tried not to look at the pretty parrots- they were bigger than I thought. I shuddered. I read up their information instead and here's a very interesting one.

This is the bird who was supposedly Winston Churchill's. Juliana tried to get him to curse the Nazis by saying "Nazi" to him.

Then we saw more animals like Persian cheetahs, lionesses, elephants, polar bears, chimps, etc. There were two sauctaries- tropical and avian which I certainly did not go through. Juliana and I were patient with each other over my fear of birds. We loved seeing all the baby animals- I had a theory that there are so many baby animals because this is Israel where population is encouraged and a place for rebirth. We went through an "African safari" which wasn't really what I expected. We saw a rhino and some gazelles and a few zebras. The visitor's center was built like Noah's Ark- pretty cool.

We didn't actually finished the entire zoo since we were getting to be late for lunch (like around 3-3:30) and we didn't want to be starving. While we ate our sandwiches, we watched the workers set up a huge catering party for zoo donors. It looks like it would be a fancy one.

The day was soooo hot that we finished our water nearly before our lunch break. I really like the zoo because it was simple- the information about the animals weren't overwhelming and we didn't feel pressured to see the entire zoo because there weren't that many animals as say, in Bronx or the National Zoo. I was kind of disappointed that there weren't any information about the babies- I would've loved to know about their ages and when were they born.