A few faces

Did I mention we went to the zoo last week, too?

Liza has found a new career goal -

Camel Driver.

Never heard of that before

Last weekend we went to the zoo for my training walk, and Jason and Liza cruised the exhibits while I walked circles around them (literally - I'd do a circle through the Northern Trek area while they were checking out the polar bears, and wander around the top of the hill while they were on the playground near the primate house, etc.). I ended up going past every exhibit several times, which let me see some behaviors I'd never seen before.

Heck, I managed to find an animal I'd never seen before. Before watching "Madagascar" I'd never heard of a "foosa," the lion-like things that keep trying to eat the lemurs. I'd never seen one in a zoo, either, so I sort of assumed that they were made up to add interest to the plot.

So imagine my surprise when I rounded the corner on the tiny Madagascar exhibit in the primate house and found that there was a fossa on exhibit right across from the lemurs. Score! I was even more surprised when I saw what the thing was doing:



I've heard of a "lazy eye," but I've never seen any animal with a leg that's so lazy it won't even get on the exercise wheel. I think it probably is harder for the fossa to do this than it would be to just get on and run like a normal animal. But it's definitely funnier this way.

Boo at the Zoo

Last weekend we attended Boo at the Zoo for the third year running. Liza has been declaring for weeks that she was going to be a fairy princess, using her sleeping beauty dress and some wings ... but she decided at the last minute that she wanted to design her own costume, and I was frankly too tired to argue it with her as long as it was warm enough. Which is why we ended up with this:

For the record (and from the top), that's a princess tiara with stickers all over the netting at the back and two butterfly hair clips clipped to the front, a butterfly t-shirt over top of a pink fleece sweatshirt, a butterfly hairband as a bracelet, two cheap dress-up skirts with hair bows clipped to the hem, a pair of tights, and white dress shoes that are a size too small. And apparently she was a garden pixie (or a garden sprite, or a garden fairy with no wings, depending on when you asked her).

This was the first time we've managed to get Liza to willingly go ask for the candy, and talk to the cello players, and even volunteer to be a helper during the magic show. It was also the first year that the animatronic dinosaurs have been on display at the same time as Boo at the Zoo, which is why we got to see things like this:

We all agreed that the one they dressed up as a hula girl (complete with lei, shell bikini top, and grass skirt) was the funniest, but this one was the best-lit, so that's what you get to see.

It will be interesting to see whether Liza repeats the costume on actual Halloween, or comes up with something new. I'm guessing we'll get some new mash-up of 400 pieces of stuff from her dressup trunk, but maybe she'll surprise me. You never can tell with Liza.