The next day, as instructed, we met up with Lotte at the Riverbanks Zoo, in Columbia.

The Riverbanks Zoo is a small zoo, in comparison with the Phoenix Zoo (it's about the size of the Reid Park Zoo in Tucson), but it definitely a zoo worth visiting.  There is a wide variety of animals on display there, including sea lions, alligators, penguins, and even gorillas.  Some of the animal exhibits included lectures about the animals, presented by the zookeepers. 

The exhibit that Lotte couldn't wait to show us was the lorry exhibit.  It was her favorite thing to do at the zoo.  Not only were the brightly-colored birds beautiful to watch, but visitors could also feed them cups of nectar.

Feeding birds?  Hmm...Mary wasn't quite sure about that...

As soon as we entered the exhibit with our cups of nectar, the birds went wild and swooped down on us to get their treat.  Mary, of course, was startled by this behavior and dropped her cup of nectar.  She also didn't like it when the lorries tried to land on her head, even though she thought it was funny that Daddy had several on his head and shoulders.

To help calm Mary down, John took her aside and showed her to feed the lorries.  He had her hold up a cup of nectar and helped her hold it steady.  Then, one of the colorful birds perched on his hand and drank from the cup.  Mary was fascinated by how the bird drank; but when more of his friends tried to join in on the fun, she didn't want anything else to do with that.

Lotte, on the other hand, was covered with lorries; they loved her, and she enjoyed played with them. 

We spent about two hours at the zoo that morning; then, around noon, Lotte took Mary home with her, and John and I went to the Columbiana Mall to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.  It had just opened last week and we wanted to go see it...without Mary, of course.  This was our perfect opportunity to do so, now that Mary was otherwise occupied with Lotte!

After the movie, John and I returned to Lotte's house to pick up Mary, and we stayed there for a little while, chatting with Lotte and Richard.  Just before dinnertime, though, we said our good-byes and headed back to the Lake House; there were still enough daylight hours left for us to take the boat out...

And that's just what we did; we took the boat out on Lake Murray for an hour, until the sun started to set.  We then returned to the dock and began cooking dinner.  At that point, we were in for the rest of the night...

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