When I left off, Josh and I had just finished being attacked by a herd of greedy goats who tried to eat our pants (especially the drawstrings at my waist.) Then we looked at some of the birds that were hanging out in the zoo part of the park. Please check out the first part of our trip to Grant’s Farm to read about the deer park and goats. Oh, and technically the post on the Clydesdales was part of this trip to Grant’s Farm as well…

After meeting the goats, we checked out some of the other animals in the zoo. There were a lot of animals there with a surprising variety. One thing I should note is that the selections of animals are more like what you migh se at a petting zoo rather than a zoo. There were no dangerous predators like big cats. The park was still very enjoyable and it seemed petting the animals was allowed, though there were notices that the animals might bite.

We saw two really big tortoises. I got a picture of a tortoise up close, but I think this picture better demonstrates the size of the animal.

There were two amphitheaters for animal shows. The first had a regular animal show with several varieties of animals from pigs to cockroaches and the other was dedicated to elephant demonstrations. The park also had a nice carousel.

This iguana was hanging out near the animal show.

Josh never misses an opportunity to feed animals, so we fed this llama. It didn’t spit at Josh but I know it was thinking about it.

Somewhere near the kangaroo and the llama there was a stand offering samples of something called a Lime-arita (made by Budweiser of course.) As we are not people to pass up free samples we tried it. And it was pretty good. It tasted like a really sweet, carbonated margarita with maybe a hint of beer. We took our Lime-aritas with us to the animal show.

The animal show was fun. It had most of the things you expect from that kind of show. There were some corny jokes and lots of puns. One of the best segments was a rat race where they chose 4 children and had rats run across their backs and arms. Josh was very disappointed that he wasn’t called up as a participant because he loves rats. After the show was over we headed over to the other amphitheater to see the Elephant training show.

Josh was more excited for the elephant show

This was amazing. The elephant was really well behaved and loved showing off. They even threw peanuts into her cage for her to snack on.

The elephant is balancing on the concrete curb surrounding the grass

After the elephant demonstration we wandered around looking at the remaining animals, checked out the Bauernhof, and headed back to the car.

We saw some miniature horses.

We also saw a camel and some zebra.

The Bauernhof is the food court area of the zoo. It also houses a collection of carriages as well as a tack room and some trophies that were won by the Busch family’s horses. According to the Grant’s Farm website, a Bauernhof is a Bavarian farmstead. This was the first building built by the Busch family on site and presumably was a working farm building. I wish I had taken a few more pictures to illustrate how lovely the building it. The building encloses a courtyard. The carriage house and stables are on one side of the courtyard while a draft house and snack stand are on the other.

There were some stables inside with more horses and some mules. This was a baby who had been born earlier this year.

We didn’t have any snacks while we were there so we can’t report on the food it was German themed but had lots of standard American options. We realized as we were boarding the tram that they give free tastings of select Anheuser-Busch products. The tram ride out was much shorter than the one in and in a few minutes we were dropped off in front of the gift shop (which is named the General’s Store…) While we were in the shop we realized that we do need to start drinking more Anheuser-Busch products, at least while we live in St. Louis, because the company has done so much for the city. I would do it to support Grant’s farm alone!

Maybe one day we’ll get the hang of these self portraits…