A Virginia Zoo Membership Review

Over at My Active Child today, I'm sharing some thoughts on our year with a Virginia Zoo membership. Have you thought about joining the Zoo but aren't quite sure whether it's worth it? I hope this can help give you an idea.

(P.S. -- that picture of Anouk is from this time last summer! Look how little!)

Happy Wednesday!

Garden Tales at the Virginia Zoo

We're big fans of Zoo Tales at the Virginia Zoo, so we gave a big cheer when they brought back their summertime sister program, Garden Tales, at the beginning of April. Like Zoo Tales, the Garden Tales program consists of a few themed stories suitable for toddlers and younger kids, but instead of meeting new animal friends each week, participants are introduced to a different kind of plant that grows around the zoo, with an activity to follow.

This year's inaugural Garden Tales focused on vegetables, and how they can be either "tops" or "bottoms." The kids were invited to examine some vegetables up close, and to guess whether they grew above or below the ground by putting the relevant veggie cutout above or below the soil line on a felt board. Some of them were familiar, like carrots, but a few, like radishes with their leafy tops, required more thought. The funniest part, I think, was seeing the storytime leader hold out a round green head of lettuce and ask the group what it was. "It's a salad!" one toddler piped up, and the others scrambled to voice their agreement: yes, yes, this is definitely a salad.

Baby A. and I have been frequent Zoo Tales-goers, but to tell the truth, she's become a little bored with animals lately (after having been asked over and over again for the past 18 months what this one or that one "says," I'm not sure I blame her).  With all of the plants in our yard bursting into bloom, and because of our renewed visits to the farm, she's become really interested in plants over the past few weeks -- how they grow, what they eat, what makes them happy -- so Garden Tales is right up her alley. She's asked every morning this week whether we're going to see the "baby plants" today and seems bummed when I tell her she'll have to content herself with the pallets of seedlings in our backyard. It's just not as exciting when there's not a lion or two nearby, I guess. (Or a tiger -- the VA Zoo's new zoo tigers arrived in their habitats in last week!)

The Virginia Zoo has some gorgeous gardens and trained horticulturalists to recreate animal habitats from all over the world (many of the treats the animals enjoy are grown right on the zoo grounds). The gardens and the plants are so pretty and well-kept that it's almost a reason in itself to visit. (You can read more about the zoo's different gardens and the plants in them here).

Garden Tales is held every Thursday morning at 11 in the zoo's Eco-Garden, just off of the main plaza. It's free with admission (and always free to zoo members).

I can't get over how much older Baby A. looks in this picture compared to our first visit to the zoo last summer. Next year she'll probably be as tall as that turtle, right?

The Reptile House at the Virginia Zoo

The reptile house is easy to miss at the Virginia Zoo. It's tucked away in the barnyard, which is currently closed for renovations, so it's not very a high-traffic area. However, Zoo Tales is often held during the winter in the barnyard classroom, and Anouk and I rediscovered the reptile house after storytime a few weeks ago. It has quickly become one of our favorite places to spend a rainy/chilly morning at the zoo.

The exhibit is pretty low-key, definitely not as flashy as the new tiger or orangutan habitat. It hasn't been renovated in a long time -- not since I was a kid, because I remember visiting it and things looked exactly the same, then. But it would be a shame to judge the reptile house on its outward appearance -- because the array of reptiles (and amphibians!) at the Virginia Zoo is pretty amazing. They have a wide collection of snakes and frogs, turtles and lizards (including a couple of fearsome iguanas), a few of which we've been lucky enough to be able to see up close (and pet!) at recent Zoo Tales. A. has been all about frogs ("woggies") lately, thanks to a little rubber frog she got at the pediatrician's office, and enjoys being held up for some face time with the frogs more than almost anything else the zoo has to offer.

The reptile house is attached to the nocturnal animal exhibit, and so when we tire of the creepy crawlies, we mosey on over to visit the the shrews, porcupines, and owls, and the animals in the small mammal house, including a teeny tiny red deer and the spider monkeys. The monkeys might just be our favorite animals at the zoo -- they are constantly in motion, tumbling and rolling, swinging from branches, and tossing each other food. It's worth a zoo trip just to see them -- Anne and I could watch the spider monkeys for hours. They're better than any movie, and far less predictable.

Don't forget about the reptiles and the small mammals on your next zoo visit! They just might surprise you, and turn out to be your favorites, too.