That Lioness is Hungry

It has been sweltering hot here this week.  With the heat index, it has felt like it has been over 100 degrees on multiple days.  Today is actually a cooler day and it was nice to have a slight relief from the heat.  The water at the outdoor pool went from being somewhat chilly to feeling like bath water in a matter of 2 weeks.  The water feels good when we go to play, but I'm glad we aren't training in the pool, because that would be miserable.  

Patrick has been at a swim meet in Wichita since early Friday morning and will be home late tonight.  Sarah took the kids to the pool on both Friday and Saturday.  Elle is quite the fish now.  I think Jay wishes he was bigger and could swim on his own because he tries to wiggle out of my arms in the deep water.  Today we went to the Topeka Zoo and then out to lunch at Arby's.  Elle fell and scraped her knees near the end of our trip at the zoo.  She cried the rest of the way through the zoo, which was exasperating.  

Here is a picture of an orangutang playing peek-a-boo:

 

While at the zoo, we went into the rainforest building.  For some reason we had missed going into it the last number of times that we have been the the zoo.  They had such an array of critters in the rainforest, including bats!  The Topeka Zoo recently became the home of a new hippo, so we were able to see him.  The two hippos weren't in the same cage; I don't know if they will be at some point.  We also saw a baby orangutang there.  

The most interesting part of our trip was when we saw the lions.  We were standing there and saw the male and one of the female lions resting on a big rock.  As we started to move on towards some windows that give a different view of the lion exhibit, we saw the other female lion going towards the window.  She was right up against the window pacing back and forth, looking in, and even pawing at the plexi-glass.  It turns out that another patron had a rolling cooler, which the lion wanted very, very badly.  The zoo workers must bring out the lions' food in coolers.  I, quite honestly, felt a bit uncomfortable with the lion being so close and obviously hungry.  I imagined the plexi-glass somehow coming down the lion coming after all the kids there.  I know, the likelihood of that is very slim, but I decided to move the kids along to the elephants.  

Here is a picture of the lioness pawing at the window.  If you look at the bottom right of the picture, you can see the blue cooler on wheels.