Samantha Ling

Several weeks ago, I went to the Brevard Zoo for a special event. They were hosting a food and wine festival that involved all the local restaurants. Stations were set up at various intervals around the zoo where you could grab a little sampling of their food. The event started at 5:00 p.m., which meant that I wouldn't have much light left to take my photographs. So I don't have a lot of them. Brevard is also a small zoo as well, but you know me, I could have taken a million photos of the same flower petal if I got the chance. Unfortunately, the light was not on my side, so I only got a few photos. A lot of the animals had already gone to sleep as well. So I didn't get to see all the animals at the zoo either.

The great thing about special events is that the zoo staff brings out a few of its animals. This sloth was at the entrance of the zoo. She wasn't fully awake yet. Slothes are nocturnal, so she was a bit groggy, but still tolerant of everyone touching her. What I hadn't noticed when I was there, but did notice in this photo is that this sloth has fangs. But they're more like buck-toothed fangs. And yes, that photo is oriented correctly. Slothes hang upside down most of their lives.

The zoo staff had also brought out a Gila Monster, but it was misbehaving, so it was returned to its cage before anyone really got to take a good look at it. But seriously, why would you get up close to one of those? Didn't one bite Sharon Stone's hubby?

The food at the festival included Outback Steakhouse, Chili's, Crispers, Firehouse Grill, and a few smaller family owned restaurants. I sampled a lot of the food, but none of it would be considered out of this world. But it was good enough food since they could only bring buffet type still dishes.

I did find this italian dessert called a Satellite? What it basically amounted to was a big puffy piece of fried dough covered in powdered sugar. I liked it so much, I ate four of them and I wanted more. But I knew that they were bad for me, so I didn't go back. But I would have.

If my ass weren't so big.

I had always seen Capybara's on television. They were always lurking around the edges of a lake chewing on some green vegetation. And I knew that they were related to the guinea pig. But nobody told me how big they really were. None of the nature shows deemed it relevant to give a relative size of the thing. I mean these things were HUGE. They were the size of a medium dog. But they were still cute, nonetheless.

Florida zoos really enjoy having a section called "Wild Florida". And what invariably ends up in this exhibit is an alligator.

You would also think that since we were out and about in the late afternoon that it would be nice and cool.

But you would be wrong.

I don't know if it was particularly hot that evening, or if the heat from the water was being trapped by the canopy overhead. But it was sweltering. Chris once touched my bare shoulders and started to say that I was all sweaty, but then thought better of it. He did, however, go and buy an overpriced bottle of water for me.

Later this month, the Brevard Zoo will have a Boo at the Zoo event. I'm hoping since it will be Fall-ish weather that I can go earlier in the day and catch some animals before they go to bed and then continue on to the Boo event where they have haunted houses and activities for children (which I will totally do. Hey, I paid too!). Hopefully the weather won't be so hot that all the animals do is hide under the shade the whole time. Which is what happened when we went to Animal Kingdom.

Hope you enjoyed the photos! For a few more I didn't show here, you can visit the smugmug site.