On Friday, April 29th, Bryan took the day off from work so we could take Matthew to the zoo. We figured going during April would mean cooler temperatures and visiting during the week would mean the zoo wouldn't be that crowded. Makes sense right?!?! Boy, were we wrong!! The temperatures weren't that bad, a little on the warm side, but totally doable. However, I'm pretty positive we were in the park with every elementary student in the city of Dallas!!
As we were nearing the exit for the zoo on I-35 traffic came to a standstill. I figured there was a wreck or construction but as we got nearer we noticed all the cars were trying to exit the same exit as the zoo, along with SEVERAL school buses. I looked over at Bryan and said, "You realize what's going on today don't you? It must be field trip day." We decided to go on ahead and go to the zoo since we were almost there, we packed a lunch, and we had been talking to Matthew about it all morning. When we were paying for parking I was curious and asked the worker how many schools we would be sharing the zoo with that day and his reply was 16. He said everyday that week they had about 2-3 thousand students come to the park, WOW!! But, we forged ahead anyway! After we parked we were standing near our car putting sunscreen on and packing all our stuff in Matthew's stroller when another family walked by. The dad looked at Bryan and said something to the effect of, "We must be the craziest people trying to go to the zoo today." My thoughts exactly, but it was sure to be a memorable day!!
Bryan and I took Matthew to the zoo last year but he was too little to get what was going on, he just enjoyed getting out of the house ;) While we were there we did the right part of the zoo which has farm animals, birds, tigers, small monkey's, rino's, etc. On the left side was a new exhibit called, "Wilds of Africa". We didn't go through this part last year because we ran out of time so we were going to head to that side first! I was REALLY excited to see this exhibit because I love seeing animals from Africa. I've told Bryan my dream vacation is to go to Africa to see Victoria Falls and to go on a safari!! We'll go one day, I promise!!
Matthew loved looking at all the animals!!
The scenery around the animals was really pretty too.
This little adventure happened right after Easter. As we were getting the stroller out of the back of our 4-Runner an egg rolled out as well. Matthew insisted on carrying it the entire day :)
We took a time out for a family shot!!
The Dallas Zoo has a really cool Giraffe exhibit! It's a lot like Abilene's where you can feed them, Dallas' just looks prettier.
After we looked at the giraffe's, elephant's, and lion's we went through the gorilla/chimpanzee exhibit. This part is fairly large and it is all enclosed in trees and bushes. There's a trail you follow that does a loop through the entire exhibit; basically once you enter you don't leave until you have walked completely through. When we entered this part of the zoo I noticed 2 police officers drive up in a golf cart. I didn't think anything of it because I just thought they were there due to the TONS of kids there that day. As we walked through the trail we enjoyed looking at the monkey's and all the crazy things they do. When we were about halfway through I saw 2 zoo employees emerge from behind an "employees only" door carrying their walkie talkie's. Again, didn't think anything of it, until they stopped us and told us to follow them to a secured area because they had a "situation". Now, if you remember, when the Wilds of Africa exhibit first opened they had a chimpanzee get out of the cage and it ended up hurting some visitors at the zoo. So I become extremely irritated because I assumed another animal has gotten out of their cage. At that moment I swore off the Dallas Zoo, I was going to leave as soon as this ordeal was over and I was NEVER coming back!! However, Bryan, the rational one of our pair, asked the zoo worker what was going on. She told us there was a robbery suspect who jumped the fence and was now avoiding cops by hiding in the zoo. He was somewhere in the Wild's of Africa so the police officers had asked the employee's to take all the zoo visitor's to a safe place.
Here's the group of people we were with walking to a "safe place"
We ended up going through that "employee's only"door I mentioned earlier to the backside of the park. This looked like where employees parked their cars and where the monkey's were housed during the evenings. At one point our group was split in half. One group contained the students and their chaperones who locked themselves in the white building in the picture below with one of the employees. The rest of the group (including us) turned around and headed the opposite direction with the remaining employee. She said we were going to go into one of the monkey buildings. As we were walking she was trying to lighten the mood by giving us a "behind the scene's tour", she was really funny and did a great job of keeping everyone calm! Bryan was really worried because we had no idea what this suspect was capable of or if he was armed and we were in a perfect hostage situation, according to Bryan. I became a little scared when I saw cops looking in all the parked cars with guns drawn as we were walking.
There were several police choppers circling us, and of course I had to take a picture of it!!
As we walked further the employee got a message on her walkie talkie telling her to lead us to the front part/right side of the zoo. They were going to completely evacuate and secure the Wild's of Africa exhibit. So here's a picture of everyone fleeing the scene! A little blurry but you get the idea...
Needless to say Bryan and I decided it was a great time to break for lunch. We ate in the big restaurant area and it was funny to watch everyone on their phone's looking up what was going on and to over hear all the chatter.
After lunch we quickly walked through the other part of the zoo because it was getting close to Matthew's nap time. Matthew was really cute as he walked through the farm area. He named all the animals and the sounds they make and was really proud of himself!
As we walked towards the front gate we noticed the other part of the zoo was still blocked off by employee's and security and the choppers were still circling above us. All the zoo exits were closed except for one that had a security guard standing infront of it. There were news camera's and reporters lined on the other side of the gates. The camera's taped us walking out and a reporter approached us asking, "Is everything okay in there?" Bryan and I both froze, I didn't want to be on the news so I just said, "Yeah, they're handing everything okay." and then we continued to walk to our car. The further we walked the more we wished we would have said something better, but oh well!
It turns out the police never found the suspect in the zoo and they aren't even positive he was ever in there to begin with. So, a LOT of fuss over nothing; however, I'd much rather be safe than sorry!!
In the end we had a great time despite the heat, thousands of kids, and fugitive and it turned out to be a zoo visit I will never forget!!
