The Honeymoon Adventure - Day Two - Calgary Zoo Two

We continue our adventure through the Calgary Zoo!

When last we met, we were wandering through the Canadian Wilds, today... I bring you a little bit more of that, because I haven't planned out each post to be about a different area. Maybe if I had taken an equal number of pictures in each area... but I didn't do that either... I HAVE DIGRESSED!

Little Prairie Dogs at the zoo... so many holes!

Past the Wolves we saw Black-Tailed Prairie Dogs who were having a fantastic time being harassed by the mutant black squirrels in the area; the squirrels were running in and out of the prairie dog holes stealing their things and playing with the prairie dogs. It really was quite a sight and I'm a little bit sad that I wasn't able to get any good pictures, but I was able to get a short video of one of the squirrels.

Seriously, these squirrels are actually a mutant strain of gray squirrels which escaped the zoo back in 1929 and now run rampant throughout the area. They're very beautiful to see and they seem to be quire the troublemakers. Luckily I was able to get a very short video of one of them jumping around seen below.

Look up on the edge! There's a little black squirrel jumping up and over!

On the other side of the trail was something a little bigger than little prairie dogs...

TEDDY BEARS! Okay no, a little bigger and more real than that.

There were quite a few bears in there actually; black, brown, and even a white one hidden in there somewhere. We were lucky enough to come back to the bear area later on in the day to see them doing training with one of the bears. They explained to us how the training with the trainers is good for the animals because it helps them if ever there was any sort of emergency or situation where someone would need to be in control of said animal or the animal would need direction. The example they gave us was when half the zoo ended up being flooded a few years ago, their animal training really helped them keep the animals calm and direct them to control the situation.

Whoa, that's a BIG cat!

The last awesome creature we saw in the Canadian Wilds area was a Cougar! How crazy is it that there are wild cats that big possibly outside in our backyard? I think it's bad enough when I see a house cat wandering around outside because I don't know if it's going to be friendly, or if it's going to try to scratch me up on the sidewalk... what would I do if I ran into one of these on my way to check the mailbox?

There are so many animals living just outside the walls of our houses, but it's so hard to imagine them because we spend so much time inside staring at our screens we forget about the beauty of being outside and enjoying the fresh air. Learning about this stuff is truly amazing and I hope as we progress into the future that it isn't the only way we are able to learn about these things.

Fun Fact: I heard the results of a survey recently where about 90% of Canadians felt happier when surrounded by nature... and about 75% said they find it easier to stay inside.

Let me know in the comments below what your favourite outdoor activity is.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

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The Honeymoon Adventure - Day Two - Calgary Zoo

After our long six and a half eight hour journey to Calgary thanks to driving back home and then stopping in Medicine Hat for a bit, we managed to finally get to the Days Inn hotel in Northwest Calgary. The staff were super helpful during our visit including taking our payment in such a way that our yet-to-be deposited cheques weren't an issue. We unpacked, hung around the hotel for a little bit, then decided to explore our first location of Calgary, Alberta... which happened to be an outing for food at Moose McGuire's; seeing as we hadn't really had much for food since we left home. Following this adventure was pretty much back to the hotel and off to sleep with some television to keep us company for the night.

Day 2

The next morning was a highly anticipated day for us; the day of the Calgary Zoo. After having a lovely breakfast at the hotel of a couple muffins for myself, we left bright and early for a long drive through an unknown city. As it turns out, even though getting from point A to point B takes a while, if you leave super early in the morning and arrive at your destination before nearly anybody else... the traffic is quite similar to driving around here in Moose Jaw during the day... (non-existent). We did get there and find a super parking spot right by the entrance super early in the morning and despite the dreary and rainy weather, we excitedly paid and entered the complex with gusto hoping to goodness that we would be able to see everything there would be to offer.

We made it into the Calgary Zoo!

The first thing we saw was a special exhibit they have right nearby the North Entrance which is a penguin habitat. I tried not to take pictures of everything I saw everywhere I went; if you want an idea of what it was like in there, imagine going outside in the cold of winter only to see a gathering of penguins outside your home as if you're in the middle of a Happy Feet movie... only without any singing. We even managed to witness one of the handlers removing a penguin from the area (for some reason we weren't aware of). As it turns out, these penguins are about half the size of a person and even though it looks painful to be a person getting wapped and nipped by one... the handler didn't seem to mind. I should mention that we were warned not to stick anything out over the glass because they WOULD take our things if they got the chance to do so.

From this point we started our adventure into the "Canadian Wilds" where we were about to see many animals which are out and about within our fantastic homeland if you're brave enough to go find them. I won't go into detail about each and every thing we saw out there, but I did see a lot of really cool creatures, some of which would be beautiful to see in their natural habitat, and some of which I think could be absolutely terrifying to see. Now it's hard to remember exactly what everything was, but I'll do my best to caption each picture correctly and try to tell something interesting along the way.

This I think was a young caribou?

Now I couldn't get any awesome pictures of the wolves, but here are a couple anyways.

 

Unfortunately a pack of wolves just don't really stand still very much which makes it a little bit difficult to take a good picture of them.

Something super fun that happened to us while we were near the wolves was a sudden attack of pinecones from a nearby tree. As it turns out... there was a little guy climbing around up there knocking them off for some reason and I was lucky enough to get it on video.

Here's one of the squirrels in action; I've never seen this happen before.

This picture is a little bit low-quality; apparently it's difficult to get a picture of a squirrel sitting still.

There's so much to tell about our visit to the Calgary Zoo, that I think I'll have to stop here for now and continue on again next time with another post. I'm super excited to share this all with you and I apologize for the delay in the coming posts; it's difficult having a family and starting a new job all at the same time. :P

Have a great day everybody and wish me luck with my new job! ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa

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