gray MATTERS: all creatures great and small

Nairobi was my home for eight weeks during the summer of 2009. The minute we stepped out of the airport I inhaled a lungful of car exhaust and smog and smiled with the great satisfaction that only comes with the smell of a place very dear to you. My first time in Nairobi was fairly devoid of any touristy type experiences- a fact that Bruce set out to remedy immediately. First on the agenda was the giraffe park:

"Oh hello there!"

This is a magical place where you feed giraffes out of the palm of your hand. Trivia: In the sixth grade, my favorite animal was the giraffe and I wrote ~~what felt like at the time~~ a very extensive research paper on them. Did you know that giraffes have seven vertebrae in their necks? That's the same number as humans. That might also be the only information I retained from the sixth grade.

This giraffe was either particularly gregarious or particularly hungry, because all of his friends were chilling in the distance.

Carefully avoiding the humans

The name "Giraffe Park" might be a bit deceptive, because there's also plenty of these guys:

Pumba?

Now I love giraffes and warthogs and basically any animal featured in the 1994 motion picture classic, The Lion King. But as we all know, my heart really belongs to BABY ELEPHANTS. Which was why our next destination, The Elephant Orphanage filled my heart with joy. Brace yourself, because you're about to be bombarded with more cuteness than you can probably handle.

I warned you.

The majority of these precious little babes have been made orphans by poachers. We learned that they can't survive without their mother's milk until they are two years old. The orphanage rescues the babies and feeds them a vegetable-based formula: