Silver Springs

Today we visited Silver Springs Park. We really had a lot of fun. We rode three different glass bottom boats on three different types of tours. We have a slide show of pictures over to the left. We saw all kinds of wildlife: fish, turtle, tortoises, monkeys, apes, giraffes, bears, panthers, birds, and we even saw squirrels and a cat.

Scott fed the giraffes. They are really funny when they go to take the food: they stick out their long black tongues and take it from your hand.

We saw squirrels eating all kinds of park food: we got a picture of one eating an icecream cone, another one had stolen a carrot from a tortoise, and another one was sitting in a big bowl of food for some other animals.

We saw a tabby cat sleeping on a stump in a cage with an animal that looked like an overgrown guinea pig (I think someone told us it was a type of sheep) and some black swans.








We also fed some cardinals popcorn.













We learned all about rhesus monkeys, which Colonel Tooey (who ran the glass bottom boat tour at the time) imported from India to attract more visitors to the park in the 1930s, and he marooned them on one particular island not knowing they could swim. There are now rhesus monkeys as far south as Tampa. They started as about 40, and now there are probably over 1200 in the area, and they are a lot meaner than the original ones and they carry disease. This one had two babies with her.



There were lots of exotic birds in cages that had signs that read "We Bite". Most of them did look like they would bite, but this one bird in particular would walk around his cage and as you got close to the cage, he would put his back up against the cage for you to scratch his back. It was pretty funny.





Overall we had a lot of fun and it was everything we expected, probably more. I would definitely recommend it to anyone. We are leaving tomorrow morning for Coral Springs, close to Miami. We are so excited about our cruise!!!!