Fragile Forest

The kids requested to go to the zoo. Despite the gloomy morning (which cleared up after lunch), we made our way there yesterday morning. It has been a few months since we last went. Now that Jo is older, she is able to recognise more animals.

For some reason, the kids loved to look at the snakes! yikes! Along the way, we had to convince them to see other animals, like the white polar bears, the smelly rhinos, the featherless-bottom ostrich, the long-necked giraffes, the sleeping lions (amazing, the lion and his 3 mistresses were all sleeping!), the two lone leopards, the active jaguars.

When we finally reached the reptile garden, the kids were so happy. Jo was able to spot almost all the snakes in their enclosures. Mike then brought the kids into the close encounter enclosure. I decided to wait outside. After waiting a lot while, I was beginning to wonder what was keeping them in there for so long.... I popped in to take a look and found myself spotting 4 small alligators, 1 chameleon lizard and 1 tortoise! The lizard actually crawled over 1 alligator and the tortorise!


>> 2 alligators


>> the lizard with the tortoise

After that, I suggested that we went to see some butterflies over at the Fragile Forest enclosure. We have brought Matthew there before, but not Jo. She loved butterflies, so we thought it might be quite fun to come up close and personal with the beautiful flying insects.

Our journey began with frog encounters. Matthew had fun looking for frogs and toads hidden in the various enclosures. Jo was able to spot few of them. One of the student volunteer guides Hui Jing then led us into the forest enclosure for close encounters. We were lucky. It was feeding time. We saw the animals coming out to feed on the fruit, vegetables that were left out for them. Ducks, pigeons, lesser mousedeers.

The butterflies were flying all round. One of the species is 4-egg fly; on the wings of this butterfly, there are 4 spots which look like egg, hence the name.

We moved up the enclosure and came face to face with the lemur, sloth and the fruit bats. The sloth is the slowest moving animal in the world, but it has 2 very strong toes on each limb which helps them to hang on to branches. The lemur is a native animal to the island of Madagascar. This animal has a very deep impressive on Jo, as it came very close to us and also in the movie Madagascar, this animal sang "move it move it".


>> can you spot the sloth? >> 2 handsome lemurs

We also saw the red lory which I recognised from our recent trip to Bird Park (World Blood Donation Day on 14/6/09). On our way out, there was a exhibit on the life cycle of butterflies, with enclosures showing the butterflies at different stages of life (i.e. egg, caterpillar, pupa / cocoon , butterfly). I was quite amazed at how pretty the cocoon looked, shiny gold!

We were tired and decided to spend some dollars to take the tram to stop 1, nearer the entrance. Only then we found out the tickets entitle us to unlimited rides. Next time, we will take the tram!



The kids enjoyed the Fragile Forest, though Jo was a little afraid of the animals coming too close. We will definitely be back again!