By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer
Despite having visited Santa Barbara many, many times--two dozen at least--somehow I never managed to make it to their their sweet, little Zoo. (It's rated one of the best small zoos in the country.) Last December, though, I finally got there. And now I doubt I'll ever pay pay the city a visit without dropping in. Don't make my mistake. If you haven't yet been to the Santa Barbara Zoo, drop by the next time you visit the city. Here's a few reasons:
It has a California condor exhibit. There are only two other zoos in the world who can say that--the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City. Santa Barbara's' exhibit, which opened last year, is the newest. The four juvenile condors it houses seem quite at home. Maybe it's seeing the Santa Ynez Mountains, which are part of the condor's historic range, in the background.
You can get close enough to a lion to almost touch its whiskers. Those big rock perches you see just on the other side of the glass barrier in the photo below are artificially heated. So they are irresistible to these big cats as they would be your tabby.
You'll be able to say you've seen the world's largest pigeon. (You never know when you might want to throw that into cocktail conversation.) The male blue-crowned pigeon, shown below, resides in the Wings of Asia aviary along with Palawan peacock pheasant, fairy bluebird, black-throated laughing thrush and other Asian birds. (The Zoo, incidentally, also has the world's smallest fox--the San Clemente Island fox.)
Depite its modest 30-acre size, the Santa Barbara Zoo also has all the major hitters--elephants, giraffe, gorilla.
But if you have a young child, there is something else at the Zoo, that might be even more compelling--the simple grass slope in the Kallman Family Play area. Children will roll and slide down it contentedly for hours.
The Hilltop Fountain, shown below, is also guaranteed to be a big hit.
Kids can't resist water, of course. But now that the fountain has been renovated and holds koi, just try to keep them away. Santa Barbara landscape designer Alida Aldrich handled the fountain's redesign, and I want to thank her for luring me here to check it out. Otherwise who knows how many more years might have gone by before I finally discovered this Zoo?
Photo credits:
Elephants, condor, gorilla, pigeon Scott Craven; children with lions, Mehosh, lion grooming, Juli Cromer; children on grass mound and fountaini, Dean Noble.
