My mom used to sing that to me as a kid. I just googled it and discovered it is an actual song. I always thought she had made it up.

Anyway…we woke up to gray, smoky skies and were incredibly disappointed. The forecast called for rain today but the air quality was supposed to be good. Unfortunately, the winds shifted and smoke is now coming here from Tasmania. Jacob had planned to watch the Seahawks game anyway. The game started at 8:30 a.m. so I used this time to get in more rest and run some laundry.

After the game was over, we were hoping the weather would improve but it didn’t. We ate some lunch at the apartment. We discussed some indoor activities we could do around town but decided to go to the zoo anyway. Seeing as it was after 1 p.m. at this point and the website said the animal exhibits closed at 4:30 p.m. I was anxious for us to leave. We tried de-wrinkling Jacob’s pants in the dryer but it was taking forever so we gave up on the pants and he put on some khaki shorts.

We got out the door and hopped on a train to the zoo. The train drops you off right at the entrance. When we paid for our tickets they let us know the animal exhibits were open until 7:30 today. Oops… I guess we could have waited for those pants to de-wrinkle!

My one destination and goal for this visit was to see a koala. Jacob grabbed a map and then explained he was going to guide us in an orderly route through the zoo which put the koalas second to last to see. He said we needed to build up to them. I was not so convinced but I went along with it.

The first thing we saw was the lions! They were high up on a perch taking a snooze, we then saw a sleeping tiger. Jacob said it must be universal cat nap time. After that was the snow leopard enclosure where we heard someone say it must be too cold for the snow leopard because we couldn’t find it. However, it too was perched up high taking a nap.

After the big cats, they had a small cats exhibit where they encouraged people to keep their domestic cats indoors. You may remember a few years ago that a study came out that domestic cats were killing all the birds.

If I’ve learned anything from our time here it is that Australians really love their wildlife. We were watching a cricket match the other day and there were tons of seagulls on the field. The cricket player refused to hit the ball for fear of hitting the seagulls. I then learned a seagull had been hit by a cricket ball a few years ago and it looked like it was dead. A player took the bird off the field a few minutes later it recovered and stood up. The crowd cheered. That cricket team now has a seagull has a mascot. You can watch that video here, it’s pretty funny.

We saw wild dogs from Africa, pelicans, seals, seahorses and penguins.

(Sorry – small interruption, I just saw a semi-truck full of live sheep drive down the road…)

We walked through the Japanese gardens and then we came to the meerkats. There were multiple enclosures for the meerkats and you could get so close to them! A few of them were cuddled up together for warmth.

From there we saw a giant tortoise and a bunch of monkeys. We walked through the butterfly house and Jacob was immediately surrounded by all sorts of beautiful butterflies.

From there we were on to the lemur exhibit. This was definitely a highlight of our trip. You walked in and were in the exhibit with the lemurs. They were all over the place and all around us. We had not one, but two lemurs jump down right in front of us and run off. It was so cool!

After the lemurs we saw a pygmy hippo, more monkeys and elephants. We also saw gorillas, like the huge silverback gorillas. Then a giraffe and some zebras. Then finally, finally! It was time to see the koalas.

We finally got to the Australian Bush part of the zoo and came around the corner to see the koala enclosure. We were looking everywhere and did not see a single koala. I was devastated.

This was my whole purpose for coming to the zoo and they were gone.

The color left the world. I was ready to cry.

Maybe they were off being fed somewhere, we could come back in a little bit and check…

We walked the rest of the Australian Bush exhibit but the joy of the zoo was gone.

We saw some emus and the kangaroos were off in the distance. We didn’t see any Tasmanian devils either or wombats.

As we were looking at the tapir, I noticed a zookeeper was there so I asked her if she knew when the koalas would be back out. She said she didn’t know and that they keep their own schedule. But then she said they are not removed from their enclosures, that they may be hiding or huddled up in a tree because of the smoke or rain. Eureka!

There was hope again! With renewed energy we returned to the koala enclosure just in time to see a family pointing at one of the trees and lo and behold! There it was! I literally danced for joy.

What we didn’t know, is that there is only one koala in this enclosure and a mother and a baby in the separate enclosure.

There wasn’t much else to see since we saved the best for last. By this point it was after 5:30 p.m. and the zoo had cleared out. We couldn’t believe how empty it was with two hours left until close. If it had been a regular sunny, smoke-less day I’m sure the zoo would have been full. It’s a little sad though because they have a special series for the first two weeks of January with guest speakers and an outdoor documentary film. When we walked by, there were only four people listening and two of them were zoo staff…

According to the latest forecast the air should improve by Wednesday and Thursday is forecasted to be hot!

Tomorrow we are hoping to get down to the beach and check out the public market!

Until then!