Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Are you wearing your green?
Here’s a look at some Houston Zoo animals that show off St. Patty’s green every day…
Archive for the ‘Houston Zoo’ Category
Mar
12
Tips for Your Spring Break Visit
The sun is out, the temperature is lovely. Spring is upon us… and so is Spring Break. It’s a perfect time to visit the zoo. And lots and lots of people will be here. Below I’ve listed some tips to make your trip go smoothly.
PURCHASE YOUR TICKETS IN ADVANCE:
There tend to be lines on this busy week — but if you come with tickets, you can walk right in. And both gates will be open: our main entrance (the one off our parking lot at the edge of Hermann Park) and the West Gate off Cambridge (formerly MacGregor), right across from the Ben Taub Hospital.
You can buy Zoo tickets at the courtesy booth at any Fiesta (33 locations). PLUS you get a discount on the price: $9 for adults, $6 per child!
Buy your Zoo tickets in advance and at a DISCOUNT at Fiesta Marts!
The good news is, there is a Fiesta within 5 minutes of us — at 4200 San Jacinto. You can pop in there for tickets the day of, in leiu of our gates, and save $$ to boot.
BETTER YET, BECOME A MEMBER!
Become a member. Oh so many advantages to this one! First of all, it completely eliminates the need for tickets. And, there is a special Members Express Entrance at both gates so you can breeze right past normal admission lines. You get a 10% discount in the gift shop, discounted prices on many events like our fabulous Feast for the Beast, and any Behind The Scenes Tours and even discounts for your friends and families tickets. Because of all this, you’ll find membership easily pays for itself!
CLICK HERE right now to become a member on the spot, and see a full list of the benefits.
There will be a membership booth at both exits during spring break (3/12-21) so you can join upon arrival. TIP: If you’re thinking about this option for a spring break visit, I’d suggest you join online.
ARRIVE EARLY IN THE DAY
The parking lot can fill up quickly on a week like this, so coming early is your best bet. Not to worry though — here’s several alternatives:
CARPOOL
Get together with the family next door, your best pals, a group from church or school… BONUS: Be green and feel good!
USE ALTERNATE PARKING LOTS
1. Memorial Hermann Medical Plaza at 6400 Fannin. This is an large lot and so close to our West Gate. Start at level 6 and above. And there are 3 entrances off both Main and Fannin, just past Cambridge (formerly MacGregor). Take the elevators to Level One and you can be at our West gate in minutes.
2. Park Plaza Hospital’s Garage on Hermann Drive at San Jacinto. This is essentially on the other side of the park from the main medical center, east of the Museum of Natural History. You can enjoy a pleasant walk through Hermann Park (past squirrels, ducks, picnic benches and sparkling waters) to the zoo’s main entrance.
PARK ELSEWHERE AND RIDE THE RAILS
The METRORail is fast, clean, air conditioned and will drop you right at the zoo… Did I mention that it’s also FUN!?! Make it part of the day’s adventure.
1) Why not park downtown at any theater district parking lot? Then it’s a short few blocks to the Main Street Square stop. Tickets are available at easy-to-use kiosks right on the platform or can be bought in advance at most grocery stores (Kroger, HEB, Foodtown, Fiesta, etc) and other locations. CLICK HERE to find Metro ticket sale locations near you.
2) From the South, catch METRORail at the Fannin South Park & Ride lot, located at 1604 West Bellfort (between Knight and Fannin).
TWO METRORail STOPS SERVE THE ZOO
1) The closest is the Memorial Hermann Hospital/Houston Zoo stop at the Texas Medical Center — at Cambridge (formerly MacGregor) and Main. You can walk along the sidewalk on the Hermann Park side and enter through our West Gate in minutes. That is directly across from Ben Taub Hospital.
2) The stop past #1 is called Hermann Park/Rice U which is at the light of Fannin and Sunset. Walk directly across Fannin into Hermann Park. From there you can walk in either direction around the Park to either Zoo entrance gate. If you want to reserve your legs for zoo grounds, you can just cross Fannin and immediately find a stop for the charming Hermann train.
The Hermann Park Train
Board when it comes along and enjoy the short jog to Kinder Station, which is right at the Zoo’s Main Entrance. Those who board the train should pay for that ride at Kinder station. Tickets are $3 per person; children under 11 months free and $5 for all day rides.
CLICK HERE for train hours and more information about Hermann Park.
CLICK HERE for a METROrail map — this one is made to download to carry with you.
OR, HOP ON A BUS
There are several lines that serve the Houston Zoo, Hermann Park and the medical center area. Here is a list:
1 Hospital
2 Bellaire
4 Beechnut
8 South Main
34 Montrose Crosstown
26/27 Inner/Outer Loop
CLICK HERE for more information.
METROrail TICKETS
You can save $1 per zoo ticket when buying tickets at the zoo admission booths by presenting your bus or rail ticket.
While a METROrail ticket is only $1.25 per person, you can CLICK HERE to learn about some discounts for students, seniors, medicare cardholders and the disabled.
RIDE YOUR BIKE
If you live in the inner loop, this could be a nice way to get here. Reduce your carbon footprint, increase your exercise, and enjoy the great outdoors! Don’t forget that city busses have bike carrying programs if you are coming from further out and would like to tool around on your bike before and after your zoo visit. CLICK HERE for information.
A way to bring your bike from outer areas via the Metro bus.
Bike racks dot Hermann Park and there are be more around the attendant museums and medical buildings. There’s also one at the train station in Hermann Park and a smaller rack outside our west gate.
DOWNLOAD OUR APP!
Don’t forget to download our FREE iPhone App before you come. It will be a great help, telling you all about the animals you’ll visit (just added tons of new stuff) and eliminating the need for a map or checking our kiosks to find anything from keeper talks to rest rooms to ice cream! WE LOVE THE APP!
For more information, CLICK HERE and HERE
Written by Rochelle Joseph. Please stop by my animal and nature blog at http://naturegirrrl.blogspot.com/
Photo credit: Thank you to Fiessta, Hermann Park.org and RideMetro.org for use of the photos above.
Mar
09
Geocaching
How many of you have heard of geocaching? For those who haven’t it’s a kind of game that uses GPS coordinates to find cache containers filled with surprises, a grown up treasure hunt that turns the globe (or your neighborhood) into a giant Cracker Jacks box! Sound like fun? Our longtime volunteer Dale Martin, who is a fan, told me all about it.
First, I wanted to know what exactly everyone’s looking for. Cache containers are waterproof and durable — usually made of metal or plastic — and should be small enough to be well hidden yet large enough to actually be found. Translated, that means you’d be looking for something that could be the size of a pill bottle or a shoebox and anything inbetween. Each houses a log book where the player can leave their mark to let the next person know they’d been there; Most will also have little toys or gadgets that can be traded. Sound cool?
Here’s an example of a cache box and the kinds of things you might find in it. Note the log book in a ziplock to the right.
Of course seasoned players like Dale may want more of a challenge, so there are some searches that require you to solve a puzzle in order to gain the coordinates. Others might have coordinates inside the first container that lead you to another, and so on until you find the actual treasure.
The other end of geocaching is just as fun: you can put together as many of your own boxes as your heart desires and get creative about hiding them. There are universal guidelines to follow which can be found on this easy to use website: www.geocaching.com. If you become a member there (it’s free), they provide a datebase where you can list your cache coordinates so other members can start looking for them. If you click around on the site, it’ll tell you a whole lot more.
Fascinating! It just might make you look at things around you in a whole new way. Dale told me “People hide them behind street signs, under the lamppost bases in shopping center parking lots, in gardens, under rocks.” So the next time you park at the store or sit on a park bench, if you find yourself wondering if there are geocache’s nearby, this game might be for you!
“If you like things technical, this is a great hobby,” says Dale. “But also, if you like the outdoors, it provides an endless variety of locales and terrain to get around. It opens up a whole new world.. every where you go you think — this would be a good place to hide a cache!”
The guidelines state that none can be hidden in places that aren’t open to the public 24/7 or charge admission, therefore there are none exactly on the Houston Zoo’s grounds. BUT there are some close enough! It could be fun to combine your next visit with a geo cache hunt! Last we spoke, Dale said there are some in Hermann Park (up to a dozen), on the Rice University campus (approx 6), in and around the Texas Medical Center (check the above mentioned website for the most up to date information). I think Dale himself has been behind a few of those!
Whether you’re new to Geocaching or an old hand at it, do you think you can find them? Is this new to you or have you already played the game? Let us know in the comments area!
Written by Rochelle Joseph. Please visit my animal and nature blog at http://naturegirrrl.blogspot.com
Photos by Dale Martin
Feb
09
Winners: Why Do You Love The Zoo?
Thanks to all who submitted photos to our Valentine’s Weekend Contest.
It was a tough decision, but here are our three winning photos:
Steve Brown’s – “For The Birds” wins 2 tickets to our Princess Party!
Lucrece Borrego’s – “Giraffes Are Romantic” wins 2 tickets to our Valentine’s Day Brunch!
Megan Welch’s – “One Word: Tucker” wins 2 tickets to either our Princess Party or Valentine’s Day Brunch (our Wild for Love Lecture has been canceled)
Check out all the 52 of the great photo submissions!
If you are a winner please email your contact information to interactivemarketing@houstonzoo.org to be put on the guest list.
For those of you who participated but did not win, we encourage you to attend either or Valentine’s Day Brunch or our Princess Party – both will be a lot of Valentine’s Day fun!
Thanks for reading our blogs!
Jan
28
Have You Tried The Houston Zoo App? It’s FREE!
Though I was one of the first in line to buy the Iphone, I’ve never downloaded or used what’s become commonly known as an App — a fun or useful thing that your phone/Ipod can do for you.
But when the Houston Zoo said they were offering an App, I decided it was time. And it was easy — I simply pressed the app store button on my device and typed in “Houston Zoo”. The App appeared and I hit the download button. Voila! Within seconds, without having spent a dime, there in the palm of my hand was all the information I needed regarding the zoo – as a visiting member, and as a volunteer whose job it is to answer questions from our guests and help their visit be an easy and memorable one.
I’m here to encourage you to try it yourself if you haven’t already. You don’t even need to be at the zoo. Just pull out your Iphone or your Ipod Touch and follow the steps I did and check it out. It’s as helpful for planning your visit before you come to the zoo as it is when you’re on grounds.
As a docent these are a few of the questions I get asked all the time: When is the next Keeper Chat? Where is the carousel from here? Are there recycling bins on grounds? Where are the rest rooms, the food courts, the ice cream places? How far is it to the gift shop? Is there a back exit, even though we came in the front? What’s this tiger/elephant/stork/warthog’s name? While the Zoo will always have plenty of people like me walking around to help our guests, all of these questions and more can be answered in a pinch by the App. And I learned yesterday that the zoo is about to add several new videos, pictures and features — and, they will continue to update and improve it to better serve you.
So I’m, curious — for those of you who’ve used the Houston Zoo App, will you leave me a comment telling me what you’ve liked best about it or tell me of a situation where the App was helpful to you?
If you have something other than an iphone or ipod touch: We’re looking to expand into other smart phone applications –like Driods and Blackberries –and would love to know how many of you would like to have something designed for those phones. Just let us know in the comments. Thanks!
Written by Rochelle Joseph. Please visit Rochelle’s own blog, Adventures in Nature, at http://naturegirrrl.blogspot.com/
Jan
26
Why Do You Love The Zoo?
You know you love the Zoo – now show us why!
Show us why you love the Houston Zoo & be entered to win a free pair of tickets to one of our Valentine’s Weekend events at the Houston Zoo.
Here’s the idea: In 3 words, show us why you love the Houston Zoo. Snap a photo of it, and upload it to us on the Houston Zoo’s Facebook page, tweet it to us at twitter.com/houstonzoo, or even e-mail it to interactivemarketing@houstonzoo.org.
We’ll announce the 3 big winners on February 9 to win a pair of tickets to our Wild for Love lecture, our Valentine’s Day Brunch, or our Princess Party.
It’s as easy as that. Just 3 words.
Here are a few examples to get your creative juices flowing:
Meet The Keeper
Living The Dream... errr I mean Exploring The Unknown
Lounging Lace Monitor
Touch and Feel
Have fun!
*Note – You can take your photos at home, the Zoo, or anywhere – as long as it shows your 3 words of Houston Zoo love.
Jan
15
How To Protect Your Plants During Cold Weather
A Message from Joe Williams, the Houston Zoo’s Horticulture Manager
I’ve had a number of guests and staff asking me about their plants both here and at home after the cold weather of late and what to do with freeze damage. The best thing to do with almost everything at this moment is to leave it alone.
- Don’t trim any woody stemmed plant or perennial until we are certain to not freeze again. The dead and/or unhappy plant matter will help to insulate the rest of the plant if we do freeze again. More importantly, if you cut back to green wood you could promote new growth. This is a huge expense of energy for a plant that is already hurting. Also the new growth is the most sensitive to the cold. The culmination of the energy output and continued damage almost certainly ensures this plant will die.
- Plants such as bananas, gingers, cannas and elephant ears can be trimmed back to the ground and mulched. For these you can trim to just below the damaged portion and they should be content. If there is still green, happy tissue the roots will still be getting energy from the stem which will promote a stronger plant next year. For the most part we are trimming the gingers and bananas just below the damage because we tend to use them as structural components of the gardens and they’ll be walked upon if we are to trim them to the ground. This won’t be a good year to get fruit from our bananas or flowers from our gingers, but the plants will come back. The majority of plants listed above are at least root hardy to anywhere from 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit.
- When considering tropical trees, if they are kicking off old leaves, this tends to be a good thing. This means that the tree is still trying to live, normally some sign of bud growth or the trees attempt to eliminate the energy necessary to maintain the leaves and concentrate of root growth. When a tree hold on to dead leaves if tends to be a bad sign. A quick means of checking the potential viability of you trees that do have dead leaves is to attempt to strip a leaf, it should come of fairly easily. This is also works to see if a newly transplant tree is doing alright.
- Now on to palm trees… Most palms that are sold here are supposed to be hardy to at least 20 degrees. This doesn’t mean that nurseries haven’t brought in other more tender palms or that we don’t have a handful of really tropical palms here. Don’t cut any of the ugly dead fronds off until we are certain not to freeze. The most important thing is keep the heart of the palm warm and insulated. This is the area where the leaves emerge from the trunk. The dead leaves give the palm a couple more degrees of cold tolerance. We’ll also wrap or provide heat to palms that we know are sensitive tot the cold. I can provide a list of the palms that are sensitive for any future freezes.
We aren’t going to know for certain the extent of the damage until spring. The good thing about being in Houston is that spring tends to begin in February. As I said before the best thing to do with most plants is just leave them alone. I know it’s tough to look at ugly plants, but for most plants either winter defoliation or being knocked back by freeze is the norm and they’ll come back as strong as ever.
Dec
25
On The Twelfth Day Of Christmas
…The Houston Zoo Gave To Me
Twelve Meerkats Munching
And A Toby The Red Panda In A Tree
We hope you enjoyed our countdown of the 12 Days of Christmas at the Houston Zoo.
Dec
24
On The Eleventh Day Of Christmas
…The Houston Zoo Gave To Me
Eleven Houston Toads Chirping
And A Toby The Red Panda In A Tree
Stay tuned to our blogs as we count down the 12 Days of Christmas at the Houston Zoo.
Dec
23
On The Tenth Day Of Christmas
…The Houston Zoo Gave To Me
Ten Floating Jellies
And A Toby The Red Panda In A Tree
Stay tuned to our blogs as we count down the 12 Days of Christmas at the Houston Zoo.