Day At The Woodland Zoo

Why take a selfie when you can take a selfie with an elephant?

That’s what we did and more at the Woodland Zoo in Seattle. I adore elephants and I’ve always wanted to see one in real life. Like the panda base in Chengdu, the Woodland Zoo is huge at 92 acres, scenic and offered canopies of trees to shield visitors from the hot sun, throughout the entire grounds.

And unlike the Greater Vancouver Zoo, the Woodland Zoo have orangutans, gorillas, a snow leopard and meerkats as residents. Sean even got to see the red panda. And if he thought that little fella was cute, he has to accompany me the next time I go back to China.

The main highlight for me, was that we got to feed the elephants. For $5 per person, we were able to get up close and personal and have them grab the shoots of bamboos from our hands. All the money from the elephant feed experience went directly to the care of the elephants.

Another neat program was feeding the parakeets and other free-flying birds at the Willawong station, which is an indoor aviary. Each bird stick cost $1. You just had to raise your arm to the branches and birds would approach you.

We got to see orangutans keeping cool and sleeping under canvas tarps. A sloth sleeping up in a tree. A bat hanging upside down, about to wrap itself up with its wings, but not before we got a shot of its extraordinarily huge member and what it was doing to itself (!) And a 2-tone animal that looked like something out of a fantasy movie – that would be a Malayin tapir.

But the animal that I most enjoyed seeing, besides the elephants, were the penguins. I love those little tuxedo creatures. And the Woodland Zoo had so many of them! Much more than the Vancouver Aquarium and also better situated so that you can see them too.

We stayed practically the whole day, just shortly after the zoo was opened to when the zoo was making its closing announcements. Now I understand why friends who have gone to the Woodland Zoo have always recommended it to me.