The Santa Ana Zoo at Prentice Park

http://www.santaanazoo.org/

My sisters and I love zoos. Well, it's probably more that we love animals, but that naturally leads into a desire to go to zoos and aquariums and wildlife parks.

When we go to Disneyland, our standard operation is to fly into John Wayne Airport, and then we take Super Shuttle to our hotel, a route that has customarily taken us past the Santa Ana Zoo. I would see the sign, and wonder about it, and want to go there, and sometimes I would mention this to people. They would be dismissive. Forget that one, and go to San Diego! There is a Los Angeles Zoo too, which I am sure is bigger.

I got that the Santa Ana Zoo was small, but that didn't make me want to go less. The Fresno Zoo had been small also, but it still had some really cool exhibits. There's nothing wrong with a nice little zoo, as long as they take good care of the animals.

Well, the same kind friend who took us to the tar pits, and to the wildlife park in San Diego, which I will write about next week, took us to the Santa Ana Zoo, and we liked it a lot.

Yes, it is small, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. One thing with the Oregon Zoo is that we never see the whole place on a single visit, because it's very large, and we get tired. Here, we were able to get a good look all over in about two hours. That time frame was important because we got there about two hours before closing. This made our admission half price, so was all well and good. Actually, even paying full price is not unreasonable.

There are a few things that stood out about our zoo experience.

One is that they have a good sense of fun. There were Halloween decorations everywhere, cute little touches like a stuffed orangutan in a tree, and an explanation of one of the primates who suffered from alopecia (pictured above) incorporated one of the zoo stuff in a humorous way.

Speaking of primates, they had a really good selection. The founder required that there be 50 monkeys on the grounds at all times, so you will never find a shortage of monkeys. There also seemed to be a really good selection of birds.

One of my most exciting finds was neither monkey or bird, but a binturang. It is also not a bear or a cat, thought it is sometimes called a bearcat. It was cool because I had never seen one before, and I got to look at his funny, whiskery face and learn about him.

Something else that I found educational was that in various areas they would have structures explaining families. I have included a photo of the one for camelids, but they also had them for ratites and anteaters. This was great for getting a sense of who belongs where in a family of closely-related animals.

Speaking of the anteaters, we got to see some really cool anteater antics. Two were play-fighting for a while, and then we got to see a young one riding its mother's back. I was not able to get great pictures of them because they were moving too much, but we still got to watch and see it.

We had just missed the carousel operations for the day, but it was a great carousel. They had an anteater, hummingbird, seal, and all sorts of animals for a fun variety. That would be a reason to not come so late in the day, but all in all it worked well for us.

Bigger isn't always better. We liked the zoo.