Our Sunday...

A visit to the National Zoo's Conservation and Research Center (CRC) was on today's agenda. This location in Front Royal, VA is only open once a year to visitors. It was about an hour or so drive (depends on who is driving, doesn't it!?) and we loved it. It was wonderful to leave town and see the leaves beginning to change in the mountains and very tempting to not just get lost in the Shenandoah valley somewhere.

But we did find our destination and took off exploring. The event was designed to help children learn about the "science" involved with the animals and their extinction. Most of the exhibits were dealing with the zoo's success in the areas of conserving animals from Asia. This ties in nicely with the opening of the National Zoo's new Asia Walk in a couple of weeks!

We learned so much. Caity completed a scavenger hunt that led us to various booths where she interviewed zoo keepers about things like: what is a TED, what is panda poop made of, how many zoos in the US have pandas, what is one animal project that involves GIPS, how many Clouded Leopard cubs have been born at CRC, how long does an elephant live, what is an Eld's Deer antler made of? And more! We all got into it - Caity loved asking the keepers and scientists how they got started in their careers. Most of them either got started as volunteers at a zoo or they got degrees in biology.

The highlights were: seeing a baby Red Panda up close (his name was Chewy), learning the steps to isolate ferret DNA, watching Caity conduct an elephant "pregnancy test", touring the Vet Hospital and watching Caity use the laproscopy scope and grabbers. There was so much more - learning, learning, learning.

What did we learn: a TED is a Turtle Extruder Device used on commercial fishing nets to help turtles escape, panda poop is made of bamboo and is very realistic in plastic form, 4 zoos in the US have pandas (and we only have 12 pandas - at a cost of $1.1 million dollars a piece in "panda rent" paid to China annually), GIPS is the radio collar that researched animals are outfitted with and have been used on Przewalski's horse, pandas, asian elephants (unbelieavably large thing) and more (but those were the ones we studied today), 71 Clouded Leopard cubs have been born at CRC, an elephant lives 60-70 years, an antler in an Eld's Deer is made of skull bone and is shed annually.

For me though, the single most important thing that I learned...is that you NEVER wear yellow into the jungle. Big Bugs LOVE yellow!