Way back on May 6th we went on our first official home-school field-trip here in Alaska,to the Anchorage zoo! The trip was organized by our home-school group IDEA and was focused on Alaska’s nocturnal animals. We got a behind-the-scenes look at several of the zoo’s exhibits and a good show by the brown bears!
Wolves
Brown bears. The zoo has one Kodiak, one Grizzly and one “brown bear”. Although they are all officially “brown bears”.
The younger male decided that just lying around was boring, so he got up, sauntered over to the female (who was laying on this log) and bit her right on her rump. To which she responded by getting up and giving him a good show of teeth and growls. The larger male Kodiak came over to see what the ruckus was and they all swayed around for a bit before the young male plopped down on the aforementioned log. It seems that all he really wanted was this wooden pillow. The kids were all rolling with laughter, as if the show was choreographed especially for us! Thing 2 was especially enthralled as the brown bears were his favorite!
Learning time!
The kids learned a great deal about the habitats and habits of nocturnal animals. They even got to participate in making a treat for the red fox! They made a huge tub full of straw and little goodies for the fox to dig around in and enjoy, called “enrichment”, and included things such as quail wings, fur, spices and feathers. They also made little treat balls for her to eat, these were quite messy and much to Thing 1’s dismay, smelled horribly bad, she had to wear gloves in order to participate. 😉 Besides this minor set-back, her favorite part of the zoo trip was seeing the pretty foxes and her most favorite, the snow leopards.
Mr. Pickles, he was quite a ham.
The biologist who gave the lecture brought in Mr. Pickles for the grand finale`. He is a young porcupine and all he wanted to do it seemed was to climb out of his enclosure and get to the kids sitting around, he wanted to play. We all had a good laugh over his antics! Mr. Pickles won the heart of Little Bit, she giggled so much over his antics! Her version of “porky-pine” is too cute!
Fun at the Alaska Zoo!
The weather was a bit dreary, some scattered showers and cooler than we expected, but we still managed to have some fun. After-all, this is Alaska!
The best part for Mom was the fun of getting to know new friends and getting to go shopping at Costco after the zoo! Ha!
Alaska on my mind... 