What's New at the San Antonio Zoo????

Terrific Tuesdays!  There are a lot of great things to do in the San Antonio area but Tuesdays are a particularly good day for fun.  Universal City has free movies in the park on Tuesday night.  One of the movie theaters in town has free kids movies on Tuesdays at 10:00 AM, and parking is free downtown on Tuesday nights with lots going on there.  But I digress.  One of the best things going this summer is half price entrance fees at the San Antonio Zoo on Tuesdays.  The zoo is great at any time but you can't beat half price!  We headed out early because we knew it was going to be another scorcher.

Morning is a great time to catch more of the animals out but some of them were already lounging around observing the people.

The big news at the zoo right now is Thelma and Louise.  All the zoo personnel are excited about this.  They told us to be sure we didn't miss seeing "her".  Unfortunately there were spotlights on the sign but you can tell what it says.

This is Thelma and Louise and two of her siblings.  They are in a small aquarium in the big aquarium.  Cooter turtles are very small.  I think Thelma and Louise is probably about 1 1/2 inches across at the most.

One of the neatest things to happen at the Zoo was when we were looking at the hippos.  There is a big window in the side of their pool and they were rubbing right up against the window.  This is actually the side of the hippo's face.  All the kids were so excited.  It was really neat to see them so close.

Cameron was very thoughtful when the hippos moved further down the window area.

There are very cool aquariums full of small colorful fish in the Africa Live exhibit where the hippos are.

The okapis are neat animals.  They look like they are several animals put together.

This wild dog didn't look too friendly but he was very pretty.

Some of the kangaroos were hopping around in between bites of food.

This one doesn't smell so good Dad.

The zoo also had zookeepers giving talks at various locations around the park.  Here we were waiting for the zoo keeper to talk about the elephant.  We waited about 20 minutes but it was worth it.  Lucky the elephant is 53 years old and she has lived at the San Antonio Zoo for 50 years.  This zoo has been around for a whole lot longer....the zoo will be 100 years old in 2014.  Anyway, Lucky performed a number of tricks for the audience based on signals or verbal directions from her handler.  It is completely up to Lucky whether she wants to perform or not as it is all reward based.  She was happy to show everyone her talents.

This is the end of my pictures!   Sorry Judy but I couldn't resist.  At the end of Lucky's performance, her handler filled  a beer keg sized barrel with treats.  It was like a giant kong and Lucky knew exactly what to do with it.  She rolled it and shook it to get the treats out and ate them up before doing it again.

By this time we were hungry too.  Good thing they had a buy one, get one free deal on hot dogs and pop corn on Tuesday too.  Did you have a great Tuesday?