They have a Starbucks Hut at the zoo now??!!!

After a long day of car batteries going bad while eating lunch with new coworkers so that all new coworkers get stranded at the park while they are supposed to be finishing up something for a client, and taking a final exam (without studying) for a much hated class, we decided to take a day off from work and head to the zoo. So we slept in on Tuseday morning and then headed up to Columbia to go to Riverbanks Zoo. It was freezing in Columbia, so while Cy ran back to the car to grab a sweatshirt, I headed over to the zoo's new Starbucks, which was of course, strategically placed directly in front of you as you entered the zoo. Can you believe it? Even the zoo has a Starbucks now! It was the funniest thing - it was this little one-room hut, decked out to match the safari-themed decor of the rest of the zoo and it had two people and a ton of bottles of flavored syrup crammed in it. So I'm standing in line about to order and these two stupid giggly little teenage girls just jump right in front of me in line, and then waste like twenty minutes trying to decide what they want. . .but that's another story. . .after about 20 minutes of waiting, I finally got my latte and was able to be warm enough (& awake enough) to start checking out the animals.

One of the first things we saw was this creepy vulture who just kept standing there with his wings spread. I don't know what his deal was. He totally thought he was the stuff, but he so was not. Cy really got a kick out of him, so I made him strike a pose to match the bird.

It ended up being a really nice day. We strolled around and checked out the animals. The koala bears were Cy's favorite because they sleep all the time, just like him. My favorites were of course the flamingos, but they were only fun to look at from a distance, because they smell really really REALLY bad. They squawk and fight a lot too, so they are also kind of noisy.

One really cool thing we saw was some lions all cuddled up together. They were probably freezing, poor things - it was more like a Russian tundra than an African savannah out there that day - but they were so cute!