Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my!

Well, lions and bears anyway. Tiger Mountain, the only place to see tigers at the Bronx zoo, was damaged during hurricane Bill's travel up the coast line and is currently closed. A few other exhibits were closed the day we went as well; the Asian Monorail and the Reptile House. Over all though, we had a pleasant trip to the zoo.

We went on a Saturday, but with the weather being very gloom and doom and threatening to rain buckets at any moment, the crowd was pretty sparse. The only place we ran into a gaggle of folks was in the Congo Gorilla Forest. It had started to pour and I had put my camera away and didn't want to fight through the crowd to try to get shots, so there are no lowland gorilla photos from our trip.

We did however, get to see:

Ring Tailed Lemurs


Purple Swamp Hens


A Polar Bear


Lions


A Red Panda - not to be confused with a fox.

I bring up the fox confusion, because on a previous trip to a zoo in our area, I had been standing next to the Red Panda exhibit and in front of a 4' square sign with a photo of the panda and huge letters that read 'Red Panda'. Yet, despite all the indications of the animal's species, a family came over and the parents kept insisting to their child that the creature snoozing in the branches was a red fox.

Red foxes are native to and incredibly common in our area and look nothing like red pandas. Thankfully no one mistook the wee beady eyed panda at the Bronx Zoo for a fox or he may have launched himself out of his glass free habitat to strike.