Feast with the Beasts

We spent Friday night at the Houston Zoo for the yearly Feast with the Beasts! As usual, we had a great time and enjoyed a lot of tasty bites from several local restaurants. (Although there was one bummer — the dessert area didn’t exist this year! So sad.) The best part were the animals though. In previous years, we’ve seen the elephants and lions and reptiles, but this year we also enjoyed a couple new areas.

[iframe width=”640″ height=”360″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/kAwouzUTEVo” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen]

We did revisit the komodo dragon, who was quite enjoying his dinner. Before I took this video of him starting to eat, he rubbed his nose back and forth on the raw meat for a while. It was pretty funny.

[iframe width=”640″ height=”360″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/IT59QystZ60″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen]

We also passed a parrot who looked like he was rocking out to his own internal soundtrack.

[iframe width=”640″ height=”360″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/46lcA-caoUY” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen]

And we saw a cheetah talk, which was super cool. When I was in middle school, the cheetah was my favorite animal so it was cool to see one up close. I’ve never been that close to a big cat! Did you know cheetahs can’t roar like other cats? I didn’t either, but now I do. They can purr though, like a house cat.

From there, we went to see the jaguars. It was took dark to get a good video, but they were totally cool — and a little scary! We watched one negotiate the rocks to get to his food as the crowd oohed and aahed, but the other one got super possessive of his food and kept baring his teeth at the zookeeper (who was outside the fence). At one point, the jaguar actually took a running leap INTO the fence, which was slightly less cool and slightly more “um, he can’t get out…right??”

[iframe width=”640″ height=”360″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/IVhpQ8AW7fs” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen]

Towards the end of the evening, we wandered through the Zoo’s new Africa section and came across the giraffes’ new area. One end of their “bedroom” is glass, so you can watch them walk around. They walked in, and out, and in, and out. Such weird-looking animals! We stood and watched them for a good 15 minutes.

This is an event we always look forward to, and I can’t wait for next year!