Dr. K's Ramblings on Education, Girl Scouts, and Life: Our Zoo Overnight Girl Scout Experience

I spent around 22 hours 20 minutes at the zoo. Why, you ask? Our older Girl Scouts needed to learn about animal habitats for a badge. We allow our girls to vote on how to spend their troop money, and they chose to spend the night at the zoo. We finally did it last night.

All the girls met at my house, and we packed the truck. We arrived at the zoo at 6:00 and found us a picnic table to enjoy our sack dinners. Around 6:30, we loaded all of our things into a van for the zoo folks to transport to our sleeping area. In preparing for this event, we were told we could bring air mattresses, but they had to be twin size. We really knew nothing else for certain about our sleeping arrangements. We thought, by the brochure descriptor and inferring everything else, that we would be sleeping in the educational building by the elephants, giraffes, and ostriches. Oh, were we wrong!

Once everyone arrived, they took us inside the zoo for a restroom break and introductions. We split into our groups (there was another multilevel troop there), and off we went.

We saw flamingos, BugUniversity, birds of prey, giant tortoises, the reptile building, and the koalas. With everything we saw, we learned numerous facts. Because the reptiles are on a strict schedule of light and dark, we could not use our flashlights. There were pretty much no lights on inside the building. If you had a flashlight that showed red light, then you could use that. The guides were supposed to have red tissue paper for us to put over our flashlights, but they didn't. While we couldn't see everything, it was still neat to be in there in the dark.

Flamingos

BugUniversity

Being Birds of Prey

How far can you turn your head?

Tortoises

Once back outside, they had the girls close their ears and then put a tuning fork under their chins. This represented what a snake "heard."

Being Snakes

The Koalas are from the San Diego Zoo, and our guide is friends with the Koala keepers there, so he could give us all kinds of facts. They had red lights on inside their habitat, so we could see them without or flashlights too. (These pics were taken Saturday afternoon in the daylight.)

While looking at the Koalas, our guide got a call that a storm was moving in, and we had to move to shelter. We went from the Koalas to the Children's Zoo and stayed inside the Nature Exchange building for at least an hour, maybe longer. At one point, it was raining so hard and so fast, I thought it was hailing b/c it was so loud. The girls were entertained with books, thousands of artifacts, zoo maps, and themselves. They gave the girls a snack while we waited too.

The rain let up enough that we were taken to the auditorium to see Ferrets, a snake, an Opposum, and a Bearded Dragon.

They got a tiny grill and got some flames going to roast marmallows, and we ate S'mores in the auditorium.

The rain had let up and went back and forth between drizzling and not raining at all. We had to unload our gear from the van, and we learned we would be sleeping in platform tents. Yes, tents! I talked to the girls a little about being in a tent. We thought we would have to split our group in half, but instead, they moved a bed into one tent so all the girls could be together. Wonderful! They put the adults right next to them.

These tent pictures were taken Saturday morning in the daylight.

This particular tent was where the girls slept.

I had never seen bunk cots before.

Some may be thinking . . . How are your girls this age and have not slept in a tent? Well, b/c the leaders do not prefer tent camping, and we do not go camping in locations needing tents, so . . . the girls have not had that experience yet. They will . . . someday.

There were bunk cots, so the girls picked their spots and started getting ready for bed. Of course, it was already near 11:00 pm by now. We got them all settled and got ourselves settled and then we heard great commotion. One girl's top bed collapsed on another girl's bottom bed. Thank goodness the bottom girl was curled up in a tiny ball at the corner where the bed didn't completely fall. We got everyone resettled, made sure smaller bodies were on top, and went back to bed.

We had to be up at 7:00 am. One of our adults, the first one up, said the girls were up at 6:30 am. By the time I walked in to check on them at 7:03, most were packed and just about ready to go. Greatness! We reloaded the van and walked to the Savanna area and had fruit, muffins, and juice. They hadn't let the animals out yet, so all we saw were pooper scoopers working.

At 8:30 am, we went back to about where we slept to see a lady talk about an alligator, which she carried like it was not a dangerous animal, a hawk, a tortoise, a chinchilla, and a penguin, which she let walk around, and walked straight up to me.

We had 10-15 minutes to look wherever we wanted.

At 9:30 am, we rode the monorail.

(I didn't post all of the pictures of the animals we saw while on the monorail.)

At 10:00 am, were were done.

We retrieved our gear from the van and put it in our own cars. We then started our workshop. We went to the Children's Zoo to begin and look at domestic animals--goats, pigs, rabbits, ponies.