Snow Leopard Festival at the Zoo

By Robert Bernstein

It was the Snow Leopard Festival at the Santa Barbara Zoo!

Here are all my photos and videos from this special event!

The Zoo brought in 80 tons of snow for the occasion. Much of it was for humans to play in!

There was snow to walk around on and make snowballs from

The big human attraction was a wide sled run with many tracks to allow lots of kids to sled down! Here are some photos.

The launch…

The short but steep drop

Three at once!

Pure joy!

A bit of fear mixed with joy

This guy did the full snow and leopard thing!

Here are some short video clips:

But the snow was also for the animals! Especially for the Snow Leopards!

There were Snow Leopard toys

And a chance to pet real Snow Leopard fur from an animal that had died earlier of natural causes

Another kind of leopard pelt to pet, too

Of course, the penguins got some snow to play in

As did the reindeer

Santa sat near the reindeer taking requests for gifts. This boy wanted a snake and he was trying to explain something about the size of the one he wanted. Santa diplomatically said he’d see what he could do.

The Zoo Train was parked on the tracks nearby

Amusingly, the gorillas got snow, too, but the gorillas were not near it when we visited them

Near the Food Court there was also “snow” falling, but it was not real snow

There was also a dinosaur demo which was popular

And there were these dinos, too

We visited some other animals while we were there as I had not been to the Zoo for a long time. Starting with the giraffes which I do get to see often from my regular bike rides past the Bird Refuge

And the nearby Meerkats posing for us

I loved this frog which looks a bit like the ones I have at home, but more artistically decorated! Its scientific name is Trachycephalus resinifictrix and also goes by Mission Golden Eyed Tree Frog or Amazon Milk Frog

We hiked the Pinnacles after Thanksgiving, but somehow just missed seeing several condors seen by others. But we got to see this one up close at the Zoo

A big highlight was seeing these Channel Island Foxes snuggled together in a hammock!

A woman watching next to us said she has been coming for years and this was the first time she got to see both of them up close. And it was the first time she saw them snuggled together.

We were inspired by the event to become Members, so I look forward to more such special Zoo events during the year!