Toronto Zoo

A perfect day to go to the Toronto Zoo. Not to hot and just sunny enough. We were eager and anxious to go to the zoo. Eager because we just love Zoo's and anxious because we could are not allowed to take Roxy and it was the first day we were leaving her alone all by herself and it would be a long day.

So we head off, gave Roxy some treats to keep her amused, but as we exited the back gate we heard those heart crushing sounds of half bark half cry from her, that almost sound like her actually asking us why are we leaving her. I nearly didn't want to go but Tim kept reassuring me that she would be ok, and of course she was and it was a good thing we didn't take her, with the amount of the cheetahs and cougars were eyeballing Tim in this weird moving contraption that they couldn't work out. But more on that later.

So we enter in the Zoo and it all starts looking quite similar to the entrance of Perth Zoo. I really wanted to see a Tarantula, Polar bears and Hippos. Tim wanted to see everything but the birds. (he has a fear of birds and no wonder, especially given that he was pood on by one this week. Missed his open mouth but a millimeter. hehe)

So we start out and we soon realise that this zoo is incredibly spaced out like a golf course and you almost have to walk over a kilometer to get to each exhibit. The best thing about this Zoo is that if you feel you cannot walk the distance they do provide a train and a bus to get around and it is all accessible (but we didn't, that was our exercise for the day). I also believe in winter when there is a lot of snow on the ground, you can ski through the Zoo which is very cool.

So I got to see my Tarantula not long into our visit. It does just look like our Huntsmen's only more furry and colourful, surprisingly not as big as I thought. Tim being petrified of Spiders couldn't bring himself to look at them.

I was surprised to see the Orangutan enclosures were very basic and not at all natural like their habitat. Those of you that know me well, know that I am a huge Primate lover, especially Orangutans and almost considered becoming a Primate Zoologist, I did a course at the Zoo and everything. Just love them, they fascinate me. They only had two which is really uncommon for big Zoo's as they usually like to have quite a large number to keep breeding them due to the extinction rate. And they only had one Gorilla. I was very disappointed in that, however they had huge numbers of other primates such as Gibbons, Baboons, Marmosets and Tamarins.

For a Canadian Zoo we thought they would have had a lot more Canadian native animals such as bears. So we walked to the bear enclosure which the sign told us would take us an hour to walk there and back, so off we went and on the way was a Cougar (Oh the jokes that came flooding to mind, Rosie), well the Cougar who was laying on this platform that was about my head height was very disinterested in the world around him until his eye caught the motion of Tim's wheelchair and he became fixated on Tim. His head would move in the direction of Tim's movements and he started crouching like he was going to attack. At this point I was glad there was no Roxy!

We moved on pretty quick and finally reached the bears or should I say ... bear. There was only one Grizzly bear and he was fast asleep and you couldn't really see him. It was so annoying to have walked all that way for this. You would think that a Canadian Zoo would at least have black gears, Sun bears and Grizzly bears. Australian Zoo's have more bears than Toronto did. Very disappointing!

We continued to make our way around the Zoo. One thing that was different with this Zoo was that unlike other Zoo's they did not group the animals according to Species but to Continent of Origin. So there were 4 tigers in total but 2 in the African section, and 2 in the Asian section.

We did a quick walk through the Australiana section and were pleasantly surprised at the amount of Australian animals they had. Possibly half of what we would have in our Zoo. The funniest thing though was that while in that enclosed section we just missed stepping on a couple of chipmunks that ran right out in front of us. Tim and I looked at each other and just laughed as clearly Chipmunks do not belong in the Australian section.

The best thing about this Zoo is the Native History, The Polar Bears, which were so cute and looked like a cross between Roxy and our cat jasper, and the Flamingo's who were an amazing pinky peach colour.

I think we will go back in Winter and see what the place is like covered in Snow, who knows I might be able to ski by then!