Fort Wayne Children's Zoo

We had nice weather the past few days. Finally, the rain has stopped. Today there was nothing scheduled on our calendar so we drove to the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo.

The parking lot was almost full. I guess everybody had the same idea to take advantage of the beautiful spring day. A lot of the area schools ended yesterday for summer break, too.

Fort Wayne Children's Zoo is set among Franke Park. It is open April 22-October 8 this year. The larger animals have spacious natural exhibits. Unfortunately, many of the species related to dogs and cats were sound asleep, often in a far back corner of their abode. The male lion was right up against the glass divider sleeping, but Ina the female was on a knoll alert.

We did not ride any of the attractions (train, sky car, log "canoe") which cost extra. The sea lion show was fun to see. The four females balanced balls on the tip of their noses and played catch with the trainers. They did aerial jumps, waved a flipper, stood their tails up in the air. This show takes place twice a day.

The black-footed penguins were huddled together in the shade when we first went by, but later they came down to the water.

The zoo is divided into 4 main areas: African Journey, Indonesian Rain Forest, Australian Adventure, Indiana Family Farm (with petting zoo), but there were animals in a central area such as the sea lions, penguins, lynx, capuchin monkeys, prairie dogs.

The zebras and wildebeests had such a large grazing area, you never got close.

I think that is why I liked the giraffes. People could feed them lettuce leaves; they came right up to a platform.

As I mentioned before, the wild cats were sleeping (lions, Sumatra tigers, serval, lynx) except the lioness. No elephants or rhinos or hippos or bears at this zoo. You walked into an enclosure with the kangaroos. They pretty much stayed together.

Orangs and monkeys were mostly awake. The cutest little  De Brazza's baby monkey born about a month ago was frolicking around. I thought the Australian reef displays were well done, and kids seemed to like the stingray pool (barbs had been removed). Lots of small display cases of little frogs and other reptiles balanced out the large mammals. There was a large python and komodo dragon as well.

Lots of domestic and exotic birds, too.

And of course lots of the human species to observe while eating pizza for lunch and an ice cream cone later.

That's a drinking fountain inside of the lion's mouth. There were several kid-sized drinking fountains, but I think there should have been adult height ones; I didn't see any.

The food was rather expensive, but I think there was a pavilion for picnicking. Lots of bathrooms, benches for sitting often in the shade. It took us about 4 hours at a leisurely pace, including the 10-minute sea lion show and eating food, to see the zoo. I probably wouldn't return unless I had little kids to take there though. I enjoyed the time outdoors.