Jungle Gardens

Is it a bird? a plane? No its...

A giant turtle and an alligator!

While in Sarasota we visited the Jungle Gardens. It was pretty fun.

Lots of flamingos

The highlight was feeding the flamingos - yes we fed flamingos and ducks and geese!

Ally thought it was pretty neat.

She even held out her hand for them to eat out of.

After feeding the flamingos we saw the alligator show, played at small playground, ate our picnic lunch and fed the fish. For my family - the fish pond was just like it used to be in Leisure World - we bought fish food and could feed the giant white, orange spotted goldfish and big catfish. It brought back memories of my childhood.

But at Ally's request we fed the flamingos again - here she is getting food from the machine with Becky.

Becky thought it was cool too.

our family feeding the flamingos

Now is where this blog becomes The Life of Barb for the following photo sequence:

For the record, my mom, Grandma Barbie was very into getting to Jungle Gardens - she thought feeding the flamingos sounded very nifty. She is after all who planned a trip to swim with the manatees several years ago. I think in another life she was a zoologist.

At first she wasn't sure what she thought of the bird up close.

Then it got closer.

So Barb fed the bird and Ally watched

Then 2 birds came to eat from her hands

But soon there were 3 birds

which meant 2 hands to hold food in

Then the food was gone and she beamed in delight.

One thing I love about this picture (beside the huge smile on my mom's face) is that it shows how large the flamingos were as compared to Ally. It was really amazing how tall these creatures really are.

Thanks mom for a wonderful vacation and for encouraging us to go to the Jungle Gardens and creating these nifty memories for us.