Where the wild things are

For my Saturday birthday surprise, we walked to Bob & Edith's for breakfast, then hopped on the Red Line to Woodley Park Zoo/Adams Morgan stop. I've been bugging Zeke for a few weeks to take me to see the otters... Ask 50 times, and ye shall receive! 

The Giant Pandas are the main attraction, The Smithsonian has an agreement with China through 2015 to keep them. There are only 1600 that live in the forests naturally, and 300 are in zoos around the world.

Obligatory lion statue picture

Style inspiration 

Asian Elephants!

Look closely behind his leg, we caught him peeing!
It looked like someone turned on a water hose.
Apparently Elephants eat &drink enough in one day to fill the inside of a 4 door car.

Excited to see the Giant Pandas!

The stuffed animal was much more exciting

Asian Trail

Pale headed Saki

Golden Lion Tamarin 

Meerkats. This one was adorable, he kept posing for pictures.

Male pale headed saki

Anti-social Silver Back Gorilla

Mom & baby 

Komodo Dragon

Have you ever wondered how they keep the aquariums clean?
Wonder no more. You learn something new every day!

The zoo keeper has a brick-size cloth covered magnet in his hand, and one on the inside of the tank.
He drug it in a big "s" pattern down the walls of the aquarium.

Anemones 

Drumroll please... my favorite exhibit of the day- Cuttle Fish! He changes color in a split second to mimic his surroundings! We watched him for about 15 minutes and saw him turn back and forth between all white, white/black, white/brown, solid brown, and brown/orange.

white/black 

brown/orange

white/brown

light brown

I decided that when we make our first million, I want a house with a huge aquarium full of Cuttle Fish and Otters. Something along these lines...

But I have to find a way to keep the Otters from eating the Cuttle Fish :-/ Details, details...

Back to the animal safari, we saw 6 female lions hanging out, probably complaining how the males were in the other exhibit sleeping and being lazy... not much different than humans ;)

The only otters I saw :-/ This is my all time favorite animal- they're so cute!
They were in doors since it was so hot outside.
We are going to make another trip to see them in September when it cools off.

After the Otters stood me up for our date, I was ready to go. But we had a great trip overall. Thanks hubby!

We hopped back on the Metro and headed to Clarendon for some Sangria and Tacos at Mexicali Blues. Their claim to fame is their stuffed burrito and all day $5 house margaritas (of which he had neither). It was happy hour, so we took advantage of the BOGO appetizers and $2.00 off Sangria Pitchers.

One pitcher was just enough for Mr. and Mrs. Smith. After meeting Brett for a quick beer at Whitlows, we called it a night early so we could get up and work out Sunday morning.

Seeing how Sunday morning was 5 hours ago- we are getting a late start. I've spent the last three hours re-designing the blog (you like??) and Mr. Smith has been inseparable from the TV thanks to the Tour De France. I'm finally about to peel by buttocks from the couch, put on some running shoes, and conquer "The Hill" for the first time in 2 weeks. Wish me luck!

xoxo