A time of celebration

Noah going down the Spiderman Slip-N-Slide

Last Thursday marked 100 days of school for Noah so all of the kindergarten classes at his school decided to do what they do best - party! They celebrated with food, games and fun. They had two Slip-N-Slides, a sprinkler, and a big tub filled with water that the kids could dip glasses into and throw on each other. In Idaho it would have been a sledding and snowball-throwing party.

Noah didn't have school the next day so I took him to the zoo in Honolulu. The zoo is located right across the street from the beach on the edge of Waikiki. It is a very busy area with people walking all around, carrying surfboards, body boards, coolers, etc., but once you get inside the zoo all the noise seems to disappear.


Miami Vice anyone?

The elephants were playing when we saw them.

It was a treat to get the rhino and
zebra in action together.

It is easy to forget that you are in the middle of a big city. There are so many trees and shrubs that it's not until you look up and see a huge apartment building that you realize where you really are.



As anyone who has been to a zoo knows, there is no guarantee that an animal will be somewhere you will be able to see it. This was the second time we visited the Honolulu zoo and we still did not seen the lions. As a matter of fact, I'm not convinced that they truly have lions. How do we know it's not a big marketing ploy to get people to visit? Noah was a little disappointed that once again he was snubbed by the big cats, but at least the chimps made up for it.

The chimpanzees were in spirited form, to say the least (take a look at the picture below). One male, who made it very obvious he was a "he", was enjoying some down time in a bed of hay. At one point he put a long stick in his mouth and inspected his left foot, but for the most part he just lay there with one hand behind his head. It was a hilarious site to see. I tried to get a good picture of him, but it's hard to take one through pexiglass.

Our uninhibited chimp.
Quite the life, eh?

We took a break from the animals so Noah could play on the playground equipment. I noticed a tv camera crew across the walkway at the tiger exhibit. I couldn't figure out what they were filming since the tigers were just laying in their cage. Nothing too exciting about that. A very pregnant lady with a microphone interviewed a zoo visitor, and then the tv crew filmed and spoke to a man who looked like he was probably the zoo director. At one point the cameraman turned around and filmed kids playing in the park.

When we got home I recorded the news and we watched it the next day. Come to find out, the story was about how the male tiger had escaped from his cage very briefly. Apparently, a zoo worker went into the cage and forgot to close the gate. The tiger walked out of his cage and into a holding area where the walls are only four feet high. The worker realized what happened and notified all staff immediately. Thankfully this all happened before the zoo opened and I'm sure most visitors knew nothing about it.

At then end of the news segment the camera panned over to the park. And would you believe it? Noah was on tv again. He was at the top of a slide and they filmed him going all the way down. We've been here 7 months and that kid has been on tv twice. I think I need to get him an agent.

Huge movie screen on the beach
across from the zoo. They really
do show movies on this, but I don't
know when or how often.
Pretty cool, huh?

A view of Waikiki in the distance
and the famous Royal Hawaiian
Hotel (the pink one)