Day 23

Elad: Today was Noa's big day. Forget the wedding – today was even better…
We got out of bed at 6:30 am so we can arrive before the opening to… the San Diego Zoo!
I'll let Noa tell the rest.

Noa: From the way he puts it you would think he wasn't excited about it…

Anyway, luckily for us the motel where we stayed had tickets for the zoo, so we bought them there and saved ourselves the need to stand in line. Because it was a Saturday we were sure there would be many people there so we got there rather early, and to our surprise there weren’t that many. Maybe it was because of the weather – it wasn't exactly raining but it was drizzling all day and the skies were gray.
We actually got there 20 minutes before opening time. Dad – does that remind you of anyone?

So we spent the entire day (from 9 am until about 4 pm) walking around looking at all the animals. It's a huge place and there were animals there that we didn't even know existed (like some weird animal from Africa called a bearcat).

At around noon we watched a short half hour show about training some of these animals. At some point to our surprise, the trainer brought a dog (a Golden Retriever) up on the stage. She explained that they use him to train some of the animals. Since dogs have the ability to remain calm and collected in many situations that other animals would find frightening, it helps the animals in training to overcome their fears. This specific dog grew up with a cheetah ever since he was 4 months old and she – 3 months old and they still live together. As you can see from the photos they get along very well and the amazing thing is that the dog is the dominant animal in the pair. The trainer said that they have to be fed separately, or the dog will steal the cheetah's food.
Later that day we saw the trainer walking the same dog around the zoo along with a massive white wolf. At first glance we thought she was walking two dogs, but something about the big dog seemed strange, and then we realized it was a wolf. Good thing we didn't try to pet it…