A Post To Make You Go “Aww!”

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!,

We may have discussed this before- actually, a quick check of the archives reveals we haven’t discussed this before. Well, there you go. Stuff you don’t already know about me– but I love Taronga Zoo. If it’s possible for a commercial institution to be your soul land, then this is mine.

If you live in, or have been to Sydney Australia, chances are you’ve been to Taronga. It’s all part of the quintessential Sydney experience. Trying desperately to spot a platypus in the dark. Walking your legs off. Giggling at the beermats meerkats. Trying desperately to spot one of those bloody tiny coroboree frogs. Nearly killing yourself falling off a park bench, attempting to shoot that perfect photo of the giraffes graceful neck and head, with the harbour in the background.

Ahh. Excuse me, I’m having a moment here. I can almost smell the sunscreen. And feel the terror from the ferry ride.

The Man and I actually got engaged at Taronga Zoo, a coupla years back. Awww. Romantic, huh? Yuhuh. On the cable car, you ask? At the bird show, with the eagle dropping a diamond ring into my lap? A quite, serene park bench, overlooking the water…?

Why, no. In the old elephant Taj Mahal. Down on bended knee, on the packed dirt, where the elephants used to stomp around, before they were moved to their groovy new digs. Another “awwww”, everybody. A slightly confused one, this time. You’re not sure if that’s a romantic location or not, are you? Me either.

It’s OK. There’s a few more “awww” moments coming up.

Anyhoos, where was I…? The Man, the zoo, writing my blog… ah yes. My blog.

I get invited to some cool stuff with my blog sometimes. This was one of the coolest so far. An invite, to Taronga Zoo, for breakfast with the giraffes. To check out the Zoo’s new iPhone app. Yes, I said iPhone app. I was seething with iJealousy. Until the luuurvely people at the Zoo told me I could come even though I didn’t have my own iPhone. They would lend me one to play with. Oh my, oh yes. Total awesomeness.

And we just had the most fantastic day. Despite my lovely, overtired, feral, tantrum throwing, almost-three-so why-are-we-still-having-terrible-two’s Master Chop. Who would have thought that, as much as toddler’s love to wake you up at gosh forsaken hours of the morning, they themselves get extremely grumpy when woken up at 5am. Heh.

Whatever.

As I said, the most fantastic day. I love any breakfast I don’t have to prepare. I got to meet some awesome bloggers like GoodGoog and FatMumSlim (uh… starstruck much, me?). And we got to walk around the Zoo before it opened. No crowds. And we got play with aniPhone.

The Zoo’s new iPhone app, again, sent my iJealousy meter into overdrive. It’s like a Zoo map, but so not, and so cool. It’s targeted at kids. And the Chop, bless his grumpy pants, could drive it all by himself. And loved it. As you can see.

The point of the game is to complete your Zoo “sticker book”. As you walk (endlessly) round the zoo, you snap piccies of the animals. You can put cool borders and stuff on your pictures if you like. Once you put your piccies in the virtual sticker book, you unlock cool facts about the animals. (Such as, did you know giraffes tongues are blue so they don’t get sunburnt…?). It was so easy to use. You can even get online once you get home, and download any animals you happened to miss, or that happened to be sleeping (WAKE UP MONKEYS!).

iJealous. iWant. All you lucky iPeople can download it, for free, here.

I can deal with the green-eyed Apple monster of iJealousy, though. Only because we got to feed the giraffes carrots for breakfast. Check it out. A huge thanks to aforementioned Chantelle from FatMumSlim for this fantastic photo. My new favorite family portrait. Awwww.

You have not lived until you’ve been licked by a giraffe.

Or seen a baby pygmy hippopotamus. So cute I nearly vomited. Again, can we say.. awwwww?

I think it goes without saying (or would do, if I could manage to shut up for three seconds) that, after a very early start (because giraffes eat early, donchaknow),
both kidlets were thoroughly exhausted by 11am. And Mum and Dad- especially Mum- had well and truly had enough of our screaming child could have stayed there all day. Quite sadly, we didn’t even return to the venue of our romantic enganemnt. That’s OK. Next time. After all, this time, we were carrying this very heavy cute Bump of a thing round the zoo for the last 20 minutes…

One more time… all together now…. awwww!!