The Budapest Zoo, in photos

A few weeks ago Lyla and I decided to trek out to the Budapest Zoo on a Sunday. It was cold. However, we figured that the winter animals would be out and active, and the screaming child population would be down. Thankfully, we were right. The Budapest Zoo is lovely, quite humane-ish, but still a very different experience from any zoo I've ever witnessed in America. If you wanted an animal to kill you, you could arrange it quite easily here. Or at least for one to bite you quite forcefully.

Just some monkeys chilling on a radiator.

Jazzercizing polar bears. They would take three steps forward, shake their heads, take three steps back, and shake their heads again.

The ubiquitous scowling Hungarian lady in fur.

A very pretty tiger. There is also a lovely painting of two lions banging that I chose not to put up on the blog for the sake of my more delicate readers' constitutions. If any of you are interested, however, you can peruse this painting on facebook.

This is a torn-apart bunny carcass, just chilling right by the main walkway in the wolf enclosure. Yes, the one child I witnessed see it did become quite upset. From what I could tell, her parents' response was something along the lines of "suck it up, four year old." Go Hungary!

These are naked-necked Transylvanian chickens. I feel the name is self-explanatory.

When observing the prairie dogs, blocked from me only by a hip-high glass wall, and wondering if I could pet one without losing a finger (I decided not), I sneezed. The little rodents all froze, then leaped onto their hind legs and yelped. Needless to say, I then forced Lyla to stand there for at least five minutes while I fake-sneezed. Messing with prairie-dog-squatch, while not approaching poodle-squatch, is also very fun.

The only thing preventing anyone from touching the prairie dogs is this sign, which reads, "Look out, they bite!" Apparently, from the look on the prairie dog on the sign's face, they also seduce. Ooh la la.

This "king squirrel" ran free around the asian bird enclosure, burrowing in people's coat hoods, climbing on top of heads, leaping from faces, and stealing food from bags. Here he is enjoying the spoils of his adorableness. Note that this is not a tiny squirrel, but, rather, a football-sized critter.

In one bird enclosure, I was surprised to look up and find flying foxes chillaxing two feet from my face. They are very cute, and you can see through the skin on their wings. Also, the Hungarian word for bat literally translates as "dog plane." Hee.

Apparently included in the flying fox diet are sour pickled Hungarian cherries. This guy seemed to dig them though.

I don't know exactly what this sign says. I think that it gets its point across, nevertheless.