South Texas Botanical Gardens and Nature Center

On Sunday, Valentine's Day, we visited the botanical gardens. It took about ten minutes to pay for our tickets, because the cashier couldn't figure out how to replace the paper in the credit card machine. Our first stop was the reptile house.  It was a very small room with approximately ten aquariums, but there were only three snakes.  The rest were lizards, turtles, and iguanas.  Mom is not a fan of snakes, so we quickly passed through this exhibit.  Next we visited the fish pond.  Eva, Pop, and I fed the fish.

Then we looked at the birds.  They had a lot of very beautiful, noisy birds.

We saw the Triton Cockatoo.  He looked like Nigel from the movie Rio.  He was not shy and began showing off when Mom was taking pictures.

There was a greenhouse filled with orchids, but there were not many blooming.

We found a cool chair in the shape of a butterfly.

There was also a photo op to pose with butterfly wings.  Both Eva and I took advantage of the opportunity.

We did most of the nature walk.  I was leery of snakes.  There were signs everywhere warning about rattlesnakes.  On our walk we saw many different birds.  The prettiest was the white ibis.  Eva and I posed beside a bronzed ibis.

There was a small playground that I played on for a few minutes before going to check out the tortoises.  Grammy and Pop discovered one of the tortoises on her back and called for help.  According to the park staff, the 25 year old male likes to flip over the younger female a couple of times each day.  It appeared as if he was trying to help her flip back.

The best part of our day was eating lunch at Pizza Hut, meat lover's pizza and Dr. Pepper.  That night to celebrate we had a Hershey pie for dessert!  We all licked our plates.  Sugar is not found very often on this trip.

Jack and Mom