San Diego Zoo- December 4

I just had to post some more pictures from our trip to the zoo yesterday. In the picture here of the giraffes feeding notice one small giraffe in the background. He was born a couple of days ago,at the height of six feet! Two must sees for John and I were the koala and panda bears. Here is a picture of Lu Lin,adult female panda age four years. Immediately upon entering the koala area we saw four of the bears in a tree,sleeping of course. One koala was off by herself in another tree. While we were there the zoo keeper came out to give her some medicine in a syringe. The keeper explained that the bear had given birth about five months ago and had been loosing some weight. It was necessary to give her an additional dietary supplement so she could pack on some pounds. And for some strange reason she likes the medicine-koalas will only eat bamboo. I have a picture of that bear here-if you enlarge the picture you may see the baby's hand hanging out of the pouch. In about another month she will crawl out of her mama's pouch. We saw another interaction between animals and zoo keeper at the lessor flamingo's area(lessor flamingos are smaller in size to regular flamingos). As the staff member entered the area a flamingo scurried to her. She squatted down to hug the bird and the bird tucked her head under her arm. They cuddled like this for a few minutes and then the lady left. The bird paced and fussed for awhile,apparently she wanted more loving! In another area of the zoo we noticed an elderly lady watching the animals closely and making notes on a pad of paper. She was talking to herself,so getting closer to her John and I could figure out what she was doing. Apparently she was a zoo volunteer and her task was recording the behavior of the animals-whether they were eating,sleeping or socializing. I told John that if we lived in San Diego I would also be a volunteer at the zoo. Such an interesting,fun and beautiful place to be!