V goes to the zoo

Our local zoo is nice and small. It took us about an hour yesterday to see everything, including a carosel ride. This may be partly due to the fact that V isn't all that interested in most of the exhibits, or, occasionally, she's downright afraid of some of them. (Then again, so am I...)

Case in point: the horse. This horse generally scares me, and at 6 I was a founding member of our Horse Club in my hometown, where we mostly sat around and drew pictures of horses. It's just he's enormous. I realize there is nothing for scale in this photo, but I believe he is taller than me at his shoulder. He's more like a short giraffe. I should mention that he's very gentle, and when he's not eating he enjoys nose pats from all kinds of people. He's just frighteningly huge. There were koi, too. V mostly likes fish these days, so these were a minor hit. Minor because there is no Disney movie starring koi, I think.
As a lover of all things peacock, this peahen and her chicks made me ridiculously excited. Peafowl roam free about the zoo, and I have pictured peacocks here before. But I know some folks in this area who have had trouble getting their peafowl to make babies, so this made me remarkably happy.
Here are the ducks. When I was a little girl, we would have a family reunion every year at Chahinkapa park, and they have a lovely zoo there. They also have lots of ducks and geese, and my favorite part of the reunion (aside from the swimming and the food) was feeding the ducks. V does not share my fondness, though, and walked by quickly: we think it's because they were a pretty loud bunch, and V's really not into noisy birds. This smart deer-type-critter was swimming up close to the fence, where there was shade. I love his chin whiskers.
Chameleon. Insert Karma joke here.

There is a lovely restored carousel, and I got to ride with V this time. She doesn't care for moving carousel horses, either, so we rode in a bench. Shaun, who is usually the parent rider, got better and better at taking pictures as the ride went on.
It looks like we're going super fast, doesn't it?

Here is the star of the zoo for V. If I worked at the zoo, I would tend to get really annoyed at kids coming in, seeing the aquarium, and screaming "NEMO!!!" I would be tempted to cough loudly and say "That is no more Nemo than you are Paris Hilton. It is a clown fish. You are a female human. Get over it." This is probably why I don't work at the zoo...

Here's Dory, in case you were wondering...

Look at that gaze full of love! I can't very well begrudge Disney for that. Much.