Zoo Babies

It's spring!! We set off to do our zoo walk around the other day and ran into a zoo volunteer who asked us if we'd seen the new babies yet. No, we hadn't and didn't know there were some. She quickly pointed out that there was a new baby sloth bear and a baby reindeer and where they were. I love zoo volunteers! If she hadn't shared with us we wouldn't have been looking for them.

The baby sloth bear was about a month old, born in March. He/she could be seen clinging to mom's back. The two were coming and going from their shelter. We had to wait a few minutes for them to appear but it was worth the wait.

The sloth bear is from South Asia and feeds on insects and fruit. Their favorite food is termites and they dig into termite mounds with their long claws and then suck the insects out. Guess that long nose helps.

Our next stop was the reindeer area and right before us was mom and baby. This baby was quite young, born early April according to the volunteer. Mom stationed herself between us and the baby so it was a little difficult to get a good shot at first. Eventually she moved away and tried to coax the little one to follow her.

Eventually we wandered around to the Australian outback area of our zoo and saw another volunteer standing there (knitting with hands that had to be cold--it was chilly) and I decided to ask if there were any joeys (baby kangaroo) this spring. She smiled and quickly pointed to a small kangaroo near us who had a joey in her pouch.

Maria, the kangaroo mom had produced a baby the year before but had rejected it. Fortunately the grandmother kangaroo accepted the baby and raised it. The volunteer said they were happy to see that this year the kangaroo mom had taken good care of her little one. His head popped out several times but he wasn't ready to leave the warmth and comfort of mom's pouch yet. Soon though. He was really getting too big to carry around.


The snow leopard cubs, the spring babies of last year, are getting big. Still cute and beautiful.

It was quite a good morning for us. When you have interesting things to look at, exercising isn't so bad.