As mentioned in my last post, I took the opportunity on my birthday to take the afternoon off from work and head down to the San Francisco Zoo for a delightful afternoon of animal watching (and even got a Happy Birthday wish from the zoo!).
My first stop was to see the meerkats, since I missed them on my last visit and it was the day before the Maverick Meerkat Release Candidate!
I have more meerkat pictures over on flickr.
From there I thought it would be fun to visit a zoo resident who is older than I – Orkney, the grey seal born a whole 11 years before me!
It was then around 3:30 so I headed over to the Magellanic Penguin exhibit for their feeding, and got a video:
The baby penguins were easy to spot in the exhibit, while they are larger now they are still mostly grey in color rather than the black and white of the adults, I caught a picture of a couple of them swimming:
It was then off to the monkeys. On September 10th I learned that there had been a surprise monkey:
There was a surprise three days ago in the Francois’ langur exhibit at the SF Zoo. When the animal keepers entered the exhibit they discovered an unexpected new addition. Unexpected because the mother had been implanted with a birth control device that obviously didn’t work, although keepers think it might have been removed by the grooming that the Francois’ langur do to each other.
Then just two weeks later the zoo announced a planned birth, ZooBorns.com: San Fran’s Francois’ Langur Babies say, “Hi!” The photo I got wasn’t fantastic since the mothers were hanging out with their little ones so I had to zoom, but I did get to see them a little :)
I then walked around for a while more, saw the little gorilla and finally found myself near the giraffes for their evening feeding.
The zoo closes at 5 so I left shortly after the giraffe feeding. When MJ came home he took me out to my favorite beer bar in the city, La Trappe Cafe! We had an excellent meal, starting off with a cheese plate and then I went with the mussels and frites, of course. Beer wise I started off slow with the St. Louis Peche and then went with a Cense V. During our meal we were also treated to a tasting of the Hanssens Oudbeitje, which I’ve had in the past but wouldn’t pass up the chance to enjoy again. My meal wrapped up with a delicious fruit and cream topped waffle.
And since it was my birthday, we took the cable car home :)