Saturday, August 31, 2019

The Santa Barbara Zoo

This zoo is very quaint and has a little train ride that circles it that you can go on to see the lay of the land. At one point as we rode it the other day with several members of my family I watched the traffic on 101 build next to us heading south. This was Thursday so I knew the traffic into and out of Los Angeles from Santa Barbara was really going to be bad on Friday if it was this bad on Thursday.

By going at 3 pm on Thursday which is closer to feeding time when all the bigger animals and birds are fed it is more likely to actually see them. For example, the Channel Islands Foxes which are grey backed with reddish faces and very small were out after feeding for the first time since I have been going there about 25 years so far.  We saw the huge older male lion there too and they have a 28 foot tall giraffe which is really something too. He might be the tallest in captivity which means he is probably 16 to 18 feet tall at his shoulder. The Male lion climbs up on top of a rock after feeding and looks at people and cars going by along the beach for entertainment at sunset there and watches people playing volleyball on the beach nearby across the highway. We also saw a condor with a 9 foot wingspan who was cleaning himself after feeding and an adult Golden Eagle as well. So, going there around 3 pm brings out all the animals because this is one of their feeding times and the zoo usually closes around 5 pm I believe.


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