We went to the ‘world famous San Diego zoo yesterday… (you have to say it as: ‘the world famous San Diego zoo’, or they kick you out of San Diego…

That is my daughter Mollie’s arm… the highlight of her day was getting giraffe slobber all over her…

The ‘world famous San Diego zoo’ does sort of deserve the tile… (unlike San Diego’s self-adopted title as: ‘America’s finest city’, which I doubt the rest of the country was asked to vote on)… They pioneered large enclosures with trees and plants and room for the animals to move around in. They also, along with the San Diego Wild Animal Park, do captive breeding programs that are actually saving animals from extinction… which also led to some pretty strange Panda porn sites on the internet… oh, look, they are warming up those long, purple tongues…

The point is that the days of the zoo where magnificent animals pace back and forth on bare cement floors in a little cage are coming to an end.

They don’t let everybody feed the giraffes… we just showed up at the right time to be included in the short line.

And the giraffes are sort of picky…

They check you out pretty thoroughly…

They have to decide they like you before they lower their heads… it is a lot of work for them, after all…

Obviously they liked me… babies, dogs, horses and all wild creatures love me…

Seriously… those tongues are freakishly long…

There were some very young giraffes there, and we found out that another was going to be born today or tomorrow… I may have to go back for more pictures…

In fact, I think, because we have zoo memberships, and can go back whenever we want to, that I will bring the zoom lens, and get you all some more pictures in the coming weeks… but first we have to get through the dozens of pictures I took yesterday.