The Baltimore zoo
The Baltimore Zoo has real charm, and is very well done. Carefully integrated into a park with very beautiful specimen trees throughout.
We all had such fun ! There were rhinocerus, giraffes, cheetahs, monkeys, an amazing crocodile that scared the wits out of all of us. There were wart hogs, too. (Love those things.) And polar bears, splayed out in shade, not too enthusiastic about the non-polar weather, I would think.
There were penguins, and they really do walk like Charlie Chaplin, or vice versa.
We had a little snack, with pickels, but only Maxime and I know how special those pickels really are. :-)
In the end, the boys climbed on the bronze lion statue, an element of the park I remember from when I was very little, Gabriel's age, and at one point my Mom would take me there every day of the week....
It was really special to bring both our boys there....
 *The cheetah. When I told Gabriel this was the fastest animal on earth, he raised his eyebrows, then took off.*
Maxime and I are cuckoo for the "deli" pickle, which you can only really find in America. We each insisted that the other have the thrid one.
I was astonished to find relatives of the two boys behind this fence.
#### Natalya said: *"If you are chased by a rhinocerus, you just run in a straight line, and when the animal is almost upon you, you simply veer left or right at an extreme angle, and he will plummet past you, since the rhinocerus cannot turn so quickly."*
I thanked Natalya for this advice, and told her that it was something I was sure to put into practice in the nearest future.
