The Australia Zoo

Well Crikey!! We went to one of the coolest zoos in the world! Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo was incredible! The wonderful and talented Beth Joyce was kind enough to take us, and wow, it was everything we hoped it would be! Of course the first thing we saw when we got there was a ton of crocodiles ( this is the Steve Irwin Zoo after all!)After that we were greeted by a line of elephants that we got to feed! We then immediately headed to our first "animal encounter" of the day, the red pandas!!! Now we have admired these cuties at countless zoos across the states, but we actually got to hold them here!! We felt rather special as the zoo keeper took us into the red panda enclosure, and as soon as she opened the door, the two pandas were rubbing against our legs like house cats! We then got to sit down next to each other and were given a fruit mixture to feed them, and voila! They jumped into our laps!! It was AMAZING!!! They ARE as soft as they look!! When our time was up we headed over to the next encounter with a truly odd Australian creature, the echidna. They kinda looked like a anteater and a hedgehog combined, strange but absolutely adorable!!! The keeper gave us this goopy mixture of unidentifiable bits ( pretty sure it was blended bugs) to hold in our hands, and the little guys came right over, crawled into our laps, and used their super long tongue to lap up the food! Turns out despite their diminutive size, they can topple refrigerators looking for food! It was then time to head over to yet another animal encounter ( can you tell we are obsessed with animals??) the Binturong or "bear cat" and oh my! These furballs are now some of our favorites!! They were so curious and playful! One cool thing was they had been trained to touch their nose to yours if you said "touch", needless to say both of us must of said "touch" a hundred times :) Then it was off to the wombats! They look like giant stuffed animals, but don't be fooled, they are SOLID sturdy critters! In fact, we could only pet them while standing behind them as they are known to charge and can knock down people! They have the weirdest defense mechanism...They can crush a dingos skull with their butts! Yes..their butts! They hide in their burrows with their butts sticking out and if a dingo tries to attack they flatten down just enough for that dingos head to squeeze in, and BAM! no more dingo. Last but not least, we went over to the Tasmanian Devils. Now you would thing with the word devil in their name they would be ferocious, or AT LEAST a bit bratty, but no...big cuddly babies! When they handed them to us, they just snuggled in as close as they could and snoozed out. They were very cute, but man did they reek! That was the end of our "encounters" so we walked around the park, which for the record, is the cleanest zoo we have ever seen in our lives! All the animals were in great habitats and were obviously very well taken care of! As we headed out we happen to catch the craziest scene, a little lizard had hopped onto the nose of a lounging croc, we snapped several pictures, but never saw the lizard hop down, it was the ultimate stand off! When we finally left we were exhausted but walking on clouds :) If you ever get the chance to go to this zoo, GO!! And the animal encounters are worth every penny, so if you love animals like we do, you will not be disappointed with this place!!