Zoo de Beauval

Didier (or Didier-sur-Cher as we'll call him in this picture next to the Cher river) suggested that we get together with his family sometime when the weather turned nice in the spring to go to the Zoo de Beauval, which is said to be quite a nice zoo and which is not too far from Orléans and Blois. The weather was not great throughout most of April, but by the beginning of May we thought we could risk making plans. So on Sunday, May 4 we met for a picnic in the nearby town of Saint-Aignan on the Cher river.

Between the two families, we brought an obscene amount of food and had a really nice picnic. Missing from this picture are Didier (who took the picture) and Cyprien, the middle of the three of Didier and Sabine's giant children. Neither Didier nor Sabine is particularly tall, yet both of their sons, who are the same ages as Molly and Betsy, tower over our pipsqueaks. This turns out to be a good thing, since we have been able to use hand-me-down bicycles from them.

The zoo itself was great, though we had a hard time tearing the kids away from exotic exhibits like The Ducks to visit more run-of-the-mill fauna like rhinos and okapis. And the litter of newly born white tigers.

Among roughly 5000 pictures we took of the five children sitting together on this wooden lion, this is the only one in which all five faces are visible.

By the end of the hot day, we were happy to sit in the shade of the outdoor amphitheater to watch the raptor-and-sea-lion show. The big birds would glide from perch to perch around the arena, swooping very low over the audience, who sometimes actually had to duck. Left to right in the picture, this is Didier, Marguerite, Cyprien, and Sabine watching the raptors flying back and forth during this aerial ballet, or so it was billed.

Molly (next to Gabriel in the picture) was not feeling very good all day long -- and in fact ended up missing the next three days of school -- but was very brave and still managed to have a good time. This is an excerpt from an email she sent to a friend:

"On Sunday, I went to a very good zoo with VERY good and funny animals. At the zoo we saw 2 shows 1 with raptors and 1 with sea lions (1, 2 in 1 show). The sea lions were funny. They were my favorites. 1 of them pretended he was a shark by putting 1 of his flippers in the air and swimming under water. "Oh no, there's a shark in the pool" with dramatic music then, "King" (the sea lion) came out of the pool and gave his teacher a big very wet hug that would have made me fall right over!"