Russians at the zoo

We finally went to see the new Russian Coast exhibit at the Minnesota Zoo. It opened in June but I avoided the zoo all summer because of the crowds. The brown bear section is really well done. Sea otter exhibit - OK, a little small but the cuteness makes up for it. Wild boars and Amur leopards - not very creative and too small. Seeing ten wild boars milling about on what is essentially a sandy dirt lot with a few logs scattered about doesn't make for much of an exhibit. The leopard exhibit was a typical big cat pen - a few rocks to walk around on, some vegetation and entirely too small, much like the mountain lion enclosure on the Minnesota Trail. I did get some decent close-up shots of the leopard.

We finally saw the baby takin. It was born earlier this year while we were at the zoo and we managed to miss it. Despite me saying it looked like one of the takin was about to give birth, and even though we wandered around for another 1.5 hours and saw a news crew just outside the zoo as we were leaving, I didn't figure out what happened until I read about the birth online that afternoon. That would've been about the coolest thing to see, but instead we're forced to settle for a photo of it several months later. Not quite the same.

In other news, the meerkats are getting a new home, the Minnesota Trail beaver still hasn't woken up and emerged from its lodge while I've been there, and there's a temporary African exhibit coming next summer. Yay for meerkats!