Giants of the Savanna

The Dallas Zoo has been working on a new exhibit for the last year or so and they opened it to members last weekend.  Sam and I met his playgroup buddies to check it out and it is fabulous!

We used to have only two elephants in a space only a little larger than my yard...now...beautiful...(and I think there are 4 elephants)...

The lion exhibit is amazing.  I'm not so sure the lions are accustomed to all the people in their windows though...there was a lot of disturbing pacing going on.  But Sam loved being so close to them.  He kept putting his cheek up to the glass...and he'd just stare...

And the giraffes...we used to have two of those as well...I'm not sure how many we have now.  But the best part is the giraffe feeding.  The line was way too long to do it, but we'll be back on a less crowded day...

And there were various other animals...cheetahs, gazelles, a couple of different types of hogs.  They also added a new restaurant that is situated on the lion exhibit.  Job well done Dallas Zoo!

Sam and his buddies (no luck getting happy faces and all eyes on the camera with four three olds)...and notice Sam eyeing the beautiful bush...yeah, this was right before he decided to start pulling blades off of it "to put in his grinder truck"...which lead to some trouble with mom followed by a meltdown that prompted our departure...

I did have one concern.  I was a little disturbed by this box with all the buttons that say, "system start", "system stop", "gate __ open", "gate __close"...I do hope that key hole on the right side means a key has to be in it to operate the buttons.  I'm surprised my son didn't put it to the test.  I have to admit, even I was a little curious and tempted.