Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!

The end of the school year is upon us, and so the Oasis Center offered an outing for the families who are members there.  We went to the zoo in an area called Barben, about an hour's drive from Marseille.  There were 85 of us, and at least half of those were kids!

It was a pretty small zoo.  It was not as nice as the ones in America, but better than the ones I saw in South Asia.  Haha.  It was fun to see the animals, though!  Please forgive me as I give you all the non-scientific names of what I saw.

Here's a black-and-white striped monkey-like thing, with it's baby on it's back!

I thought it was a kangaroo, but the sign said it was a wallaby.  I don't know the difference.  This one also had a baby in tow.

I didn't take photos of the goats.  I hope you don't mind.

Then we came to the smartest animal in the whole zoo.  The brown bear!  Wanna know why he was the smartest?  Because he went swimming.  It was hot.  93 degrees hot.  I wanted to be swimming too...although not with the the bear.

He found a good back scratcher.

The kids loved being able to get up to the glass and be real close to the animals.

I think the bears liked it too.

How awesome is that paw?!?!

Even the adults were enjoying the show the bears gave us.

Next came the giraffes.  Someone noted on Facebook that the fence didn't seem like a very good barrier between them and us.  You can't really see it, but there is a second fence, so we couldn't get all that close.

Look at that awesome face.

I was having fun.  Loving that this is my job, hanging out at the zoo with people from the center.

This elephant looks happy, doesn't he?  He's smiling.  I'm glad, cause I thought he'd be sad...he was all by his lonesome self.  The only elephant.

This was a really super tiny itsy bitsy monkey.  It was small.

This monkey seemed a little scary and I was glad there was glass between us.

He came right on over to us...

And told us who was boss.  (He was boss.)

"Now get out of my yard!"

We left the grumpy monkey and went on over to another monkey cage.  This was another small one that had old man ear hair.

The meerkats were lying around as if it were 93 degrees hot outside.  Oh wait.  It was.

This one refused to look at me and let me get a head-on picture.  Snob.

This ostrich, though, was an extravert.  He wanted the attention of everyone at the zoo.

Those are some kind of african creature with big horns.  (I told you, non-scientific names.)

The view from the zoo out to the countryside.

 And the other way.

And suddenly there was a castle!  I want to go there!

You can barely see them, but there are two rhinos there.  They were lying in the shade, because, in case you missed it...it was blazing hot.  Only the dumb humans were silly enough to be out moving around in the sunshine.

 Seriously.  HOT.

When we first got to the lions, they were lying around like everyone else.  Then, the male started to roar, and he got up.

The female got irritated so she moved to be under another tree.  He followed her and started to lick her.  So she went to another tree.

Then she realized how sweet he was, and she came back.  I really enjoyed watching the lions.

We sat in the shade for a good long while and watched the zebras.  They're so pretty.

Then we moved to another area of shade.  (Seriously, we'd look at an animal, and then go look for a bench in the shade, sit 20 minutes, then move to the next animal that was near shade.)  The llamas were in a mood from the heat.

Pouty mood.

The leopard might have been dead.  We never saw him move.

 The tiger, as well, was napping.  He at least rolled over at one point.

The lions and bears had given such a show, I was really hoping the tigers would too.  But alas, he just slept.  I don't blame him.

I didn't take pictures of the camels, wolf, buffalo, birds, or most of the reptiles.  However, this snake might have been one of the prettiest I've ever seen. It's yellow and white design was just gorgeous.  Never thought I'd say that about a snake.

My favorite part of the day?  Hanging out with this sweet friend.  She was so happy to just get out of Marseille.  I've never seen her smile as much as on this day.  Everyone really did have a good time, and I loved seeing all my ladies just chilling (as much as was possible, anyway, haha).

It was a good, sweet, final days memory for me.  Tomorrow is the end of the year party at Oasis, and then we're done for the school year, and I'm done for good.  Wowzah!