A Hogle Zoo Day

As a reward for passing his motorcycle permit test on his first try, Sam got to bring his family back to Utah with us. We started out the week with a trip to the Hogel Zoo in Salt Lake to kick off Wilbur's zoo themed birthday.

Here we are in front of the zoo smiling....

...because we hadn't realized yet how cold it actually was.

Despite the weather, we had fun watching the monkeys fight

and posing for pictures with cheesy smiles on our faces.

Here we are in front of the rhinos

fighting over holding the babies so they could keep us a little bit warmer...

...and then feeding those babies to some bears hidden in their pen.

Sam was pretty obsessed with those hidden black bears. He spent about twenty minutes making every sound known to man to try to entice them to come out. It finally worked, possibly because they were so annoyed they figured they should come out just to make him stop.

Here is Sam wishing he had hands and arms like those gorillas.

So he can swing in trees and push over babies. I, however, don't think he would last a day. The sight of every animal instigated the line, "Holy crap, if I ever saw that in the wild I would run for my life."

But it appears that his true jungle calling lies with the giraffe.

We were so mad that we did not have the camera ready when this little sucker suddenly bent over to see what was in his hands. It came within inches, and Sam's face was a mix of shock and panic. Apparently he must have been a giraffe whisperer in a previous life.

My only close encounter with an animal came with this stupid bird.

It chased me down the sidewalk and tried to attack me while I was holding the baby. Luckily I was able to run really fast and escape behind Sam without getting pecked. It was a pretty close though. I hate birds, even if they are pink.

We had a tiring, but fun day at the zoo.
This cute birthday boy didn't quite make it through the day...

...and apparently the rest of us were not too far behind him.