I did two trips today. Or really one trip with a walk between them. Let's review. No species list because they both had one last year.
Lakeside Nature Center, A Tale of Moles and Delight
I only came here because of the mole. In truth I was expecting a little state park nature center with a couple terrariums, a half hour experience, tops, without lingering for the moles. I was wrong. First off, the building has some pretty impressive architecture. Not distracting, kind of in the mold of parkitecture. The inside has high ceilings and large windows to create a very nice atmosphere. There are bird models and a 12x scale replica of a timber rattlesnake hanging from the ceiling.
The facility appears to primarily be an animal rehab hospital that displays some of their unreleasable patients. There are a couple exceptions and some animals just don't have an origin listed which is a shame. Learning the animal's histories was my second-favorite part of the experience.
Most of the animals are indoors inside the main building. The coyote and some of the raptors are outside and viewed through the windows. There might be deer or something on the nature trails, as well as better viewing of the coyote, but I was burning time for my other destination and didn't check.
A lot of the animals were fairly active in the early morning hours. The grey squirrel was being exceedingly playful and was jumping around the foliage and tiers of their enclosure almost faster than I could track. The collared lizards kept jumping against the wall of their large terrarium. The opossum was also being active in the nocturnal section.
They still have eastern moles. I wasn't sure they would based on mole lifespans and the specie's generally poor performance in captivity. A keeper did come out, briefly, but I was a bit too shy to ask the questions I wanted to before they left. Before the keeper came she was dozing in the bottom section of the enclosure and basically looked like a large circular rock. Visibility was a little poor given the multiple layers of barriers, dirty PVC, and nocturnal lighting. Photography proved impossible on my iPhone. I just watched. Well, I got bored and watched the opossum. And then the keeper came out and put in some earthworms and the mole woke right up.
I'll admit that I'm not really a rarity seeker. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see platypus and shoebills, but an antelope is an antelope to me. I wasn't really expecting much from the mole. Just thought I should see it while I was in the city. Turns out they're kind of magical. She navigated her way to the earthworms, plucked one out of the room they were in, and dragged them back into the tunnel to eat. There was some dirt in that tunnel for enrichment and she accidentally blocked her way once or twice and had to dig back through. Once all the earthworms were gone she moved into the tunnel for a while. She liked to stick her nose through the air holes in the PVC (no idea how she found them so reliably without opening her eyes). And they're really strange creatures with their closed eyes and conical face leading to the nose. She did open her eyes, once, and that somehow looked even stranger on her. I've changed my mind on moles. More places should try to keep these things. They can be great display animals, actually.
For anyone curious she was fed at 9:40 a.m. Not sure if that's a daily schedule or not, though. There was no one else in the center at the time so I had the experience to myself. A few people had trickled in by the end but it still wasn't very crowded at all.
A wonderful small facility, even without the moles. It's only a few minutes drive (or a half hour's walk) from the Kansas City Zoo, too. I would recommend starting the day at Lakeside if you're visiting. It makes up for the latter's somewhat lacking North American collection.
Speaking of Kansas City...
Kansas City Zoo, A Tale of Hubris and Woe
My hubris and woe. We'll get to that.
Kansas City Zoo is split into two halves with the soon-to-open aquarium bridging them. The first half is... fine. I liked the river otter and swan exhibits at the entry. At first glance I didn't even think the swans were real. Just pretty props. Kind of a dumb thought, but it did make the realization that those were actual pretty birds fun for me. I watched the bird show and was underwhelmed. Although a macaw did get within five feet of me twice which was very fun. It was just a cockatoo, a brief flyover from a dove, and two macaw free flight demos. Pirates of the Caribbean music was playing. After Indy's pretty good bird / macaw show I guess I just had unrealistic standards.
The polar bear and penguin exhibits were good but not great after the advances in those fields in the last two decades. The king penguins had fake snow and one had half-buried themself in it. I thought that was really fun. The humboldts were all flocking together at the edge of the water, sometimes moving to go in before backing out. I bought a souvenir cup around this time so I could keep refilling it with gatorade to stay hydrated on the hot day in a mostly outdoor zoo. This is about where my heat management practices ended.
The Asia section was fine. Most of the exhibits were a little small for their species and the orangutan dayroom was frankly inadequate for the apes. I did like the emphasis on less-seen primates. The red pandas had just been fed and were being active. They're always adorable. Kind of wish they had an outdoor space but they had a large indoor exhibit with lots of verticality so I can't complain too much.
Australia opens with an exhibit on snakes that had just terrible crowd flow given the holiday weekend. I'm not sure any of the snakes were actually Australian. The kenyan sand boa was the highlight for me as they kept trying to climb up the side of the glass to an elevated platform but weren't quite long enough to do it. Reticulated pythons are always fun.
The aviary was fine. There were five or so straw-necked ibises that stood near the path and were being very vocal. Easy highlights to me. The zoo's two walk through aviaries both have an emphasis on water and waterfowl. Australia's is the bigger and better of the two. The African aviary didn't even have signed species.
This leads into the proper Australian section. There are perfectly fine exhibits for emu, dingo, and wallabies. Then there was a(n at the time) bizarre dead end path called Kangaroo Korner, complete with a sponsor. This only made sense when I realize that the entire Australian section was a walkthrough kangaroo exhibit. I only saw them towards the end. It's easily one of the largest I've ever seen and easily my favorite display of the species given the varied spaces (marsh, forest, plains, hills) they have access to. The tree kangaroo exhibit is also really good for the species with excellent verticality in both areas. The visitors around me seemed to really like them when they can sometimes be an underwhelming species for the general public. There is a sheep area that has entrance and exit gates and then does not have free-ranging sheep, which was fascinating to me. Good educational signage on the sheep, though. There was a "Wonders of the Outback" building that was really just two small rooms with kookaburras and two terrariums. Highly underwhelming, wasn't worth putting up with the terrible reptile house crowd flow.
There was a camel exhibit. The explanation of why there were camels in the Australia section was only found on the viewing area outside the Australia section. Would've preferred it if that was flipped, with the signage on feral camels on the Australia side and the species home range and domestication outside.
Every other exhibit in the central zoo is fine and I can't bring myself to comment on most of them. I got to pet two goats without buying food. Lorikeet feeding is only available on weekends but is free. You do not get very much nectar but I can't argue with free. Oh, and the zoo was pretty good with letting me bring my cup into almost every building.
Now we enter the second half of this zoo. It is much better than the first half. It is also where the tale of misery and woe begins. The old tropics house is the one exception to the "much better half" statement I just made. They've clearly renovated an old historic building but most of the exhibits are simply too small for the species they've chosen to put in them. Capybaras should really be pulled from the South American enclosure. The mixed species gibbon / otter exhibit has a swimming path under the visitors and a climbing path over them, which is cool. I liked the verticality. Just wasn't really big enough for the gibbons.
There's a lot of walking at this point. I could have paid for the tram and skipped most of it but I wanted to see the flamingoes and the full elephant exhibit. At this point the temperature was around 86. I did see the flamingoes. The exhibit is build onto a lush hillside with a solid pond at the bottom. A pretty good exhibit for the species as these things go. The elephant exhibit was fairly large and had good signage on the species as a whole and their seven individuals in particular. The gorilla display was also good at that. Maybe the chimps was. I was no longer paying attention to signage at that point.
I had almost exhausted my gatorade before I finally made it to the African plaza at the start of that loop. Like an idiot I decided not to finish and refill it then, maybe while grabbing a meal indoors. The zoo was crowded and I wasn't hungry. Plus there had been a lot of food places in the zoo's first half. So I soldiered on and ran out of liquid almost immediately on the (almost entirely outdoors, unshaded, very long) Africa trail. After I had already been walking outside in the sun for several hours straight. Do you understand where this is going?
The cheetah exhibit was fantastic but I didn't see any cheetahs. The suid and bongo exhibits were fine. There was about ten more minutes of walking to get to the gorilla exhibit, which was above average for the species. Around this point my headache I'd been ignoring throughout the day because was picking up. I knew I was tired. I knew I only had a half-day planned tomorrow. I knew I could go back to my hotel, take a nap, and return the next morning. Dear reader, I did not do these things.
I was really impressed by the main hoofstock paddock. I don't know why they had clipped-wing cranes mixed in when there were multiple other crane exhibits, one of which appeared unoccupied, but that's my only criticism. It was really great. The lion exhibit was solid.
One of the highlights of the day was their excellent small animal collection. It was clearly inspired by Fort Wayne, or maybe the other way around. There really are some uncanny similarities between the two African complexes. Maybe someday I'll start a proper zoo vs. zoo series documenting the origins and differences between similar-ish complexes. Fennec foxes, dik-diks, and the tiny blue duikers stood out to me. I loved them all. But by this point I wanted to sit down indoors and maybe take a catnap. I almost did at the lions but the air conditioning wasn't great so I persevered. It was around this point that I realized that my decisions might be compromised. I've had heat exhaustion and dehydration before. I used to be an avid hiker. I knew the symptoms. But, again, my decisions were compromised and I was close to being done with the zoo.
The other hoofstock yard was less grand but I didn't really care about anything at this point. I was pretty much a walking zombie. Even refilling my gatorade didn't help. I barely touched it. I went to see the chimp exhibit. That really is the highlight of the whole place and I would really, really love to go back and see it while not suffering the effects of heat exhaustion. I might tomorrow. The complex is basically just a fenced in forest. I only saw one chimp, and he got agitated and attacked the glass. This made the crowd viewing inside loud, which made the chimp agitated, and I got out before the feedback loop made me overstimulated. (My decisions were compromised. I was thinking like I'd just pulled an all nighter. Like I was drunk.)
i saw the hippos. They were fine. The croc exhibit was fine and I did not see a croc. It was at this point that I desperately wanted to go back to my hotel. Like, almost sobbing about it. So I did not see the baboons or wild dogs. I got on the skyliner (which I almost fell asleep on because heat exhaustion), the tram (I did fall asleep on, as well as twice while waiting in line), and called a rideshare. I fell asleep waiting on that, too. In the sun.
Basically as soon as the car started moving I got nauseous. I tried to ask the driver to stop but they couldn't understand me and. Well. The first time I threw up in a car I was dead sober. I've slept it off for a while now. Sipped my gatorade. The outfit's trashed, which is a shame since I liked that one and it was expensive. But I'm back to feeling almost like a person again, albeit a person who hasn't eaten in eight hours. There's a 24/7 restaurant next door I'll probably get takeout from soon.
I write this all not to embarrass myself but as a warning to you all as we enter the summer season. This is an outdoor hobby with lots of walking and sometimes very little shade. Hydration alone will not be adequate but you should stay hydrated. Find breaks in the shade and indoors. Make yourself stay there. Split larger zoos into two days if you can to avoid the worst of the heat. I did not. I embarrassed myself, ruined an outfit, spent hours in misery, and ended up leaving most of my cash in the backseat of a ride share to pay for cleaning. Don't make my mistakes. Look upon my tragedy and learn.
Also I probably will be back tomorrow morning because I would like to appreciate the Africa exhibit, and especially the chimp exhibit, when I'm not delirious. Then it's onto downtown and Sea Life. Yay Sea Life. I can't believe I'm going to do this to myself another half dozen times or something.
