Take a Zoo Detour and Talk to the Animals

It’s a good thing butterflies don’t mind noisy kids.

There’s an orange butterfly on a first-grader’s shoe! There’s a blue one on a classmate’s finger! The excited children can’t contain themselves, pointing and jabbering, as nearly 1,000 of the delicate, brightly hued creatures, oblivious to the ruckus they’ve sparked, flit and fly everywhere.

Welcome to the Bronx Zoo’s award-winning Butterfly Zone, one of the largest seasonal butterfly exhibits anywhere and one of the zoo’s most popular. Despite the crowds inside the giant 170-foot-long net “caterpillar” that houses butterflies and moths, the kids from my daughter Melanie’s school aren’t anxious to leave. They’re too busy trying to identify all the species from the pictures in the brochures they got as they entered.

There’s a black-and-yellow-striped zebra longwing! There’s a green luna moth! Look at that orange monarch!

Finally, we shepherd them from the giant caterpillar into a maze that tests their butterfly survival skills. A wrong turn means a predator got them; the correct turn leads through the adjacent butterfly garden full of flowers and plants like lilac and spearmint that attract them.

Zoos, I think while watching the kids explore, should be included in every traveling family’s itinerary this summer.

Zoos are increasingly interactive and a lot cheaper than a day at a theme park. Many, in fact, will extend free admission if you’re a member of your local zoo.

Allen Nyhuis’ “Zoo Book” offers a rundown on scores of zoos around the country and abroad. (It’s $14.95 from Carousel Press. Call [800] 990-9FUN to order.) You can also visit the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn.’s Web site at https://www.aza.org and link to more than 100 zoo Web sites around the country.

Too often, zoo officials say, zoos are overlooked completely by traveling families who figure they can take the kids to the zoo at home, not realizing how much exhibits vary from zoo to zoo. And zoos may not have the budget to advertise their attractions out of the area.

“We’re less than 10 minutes from Universal Studios, but I’m not sure it dawns on families to come over here,” says the Los Angeles Zoo’s Gilda Franklin. Even the Bronx Zoo, one of the country’s largest urban zoos, counts few tourists among its 2 million annual visitors. But it is the leading family attraction for those who live in the New York metropolitan area.

I could see immediately why generations of New Yorkers so love this place. It’s full of everything from strutting penguins, to huge bats and naked mole rats in the pitch-black World of Darkness, to the family of gorillas whose antics made everyone laugh.

Admission is free to the Bronx Zoo on Wednesdays; otherwise admission is $7.75 for adults and $4 for children, plus $6 parking. Call (718) 367-1010 or visit the Web site at https://www.wcs.org.

Elsewhere this summer:

* Slide down a see-through chute through a pool of otters or feed parrots at the St. Louis Zoo’s new Emerson Electric Children’s Zoo. Younger kids especially will like the “Just Like Me” play area where they can imitate the animals, hopping through water geysers, swinging on a jungle vine or climbing a giant spider web. Admission to the St. Louis Zoo is free; admission to the Children’s Zoo is free from 9 to 10 a.m and $3 the rest of the day. Call (314) 781-0900 or visit https://www.stlzoo.org.

* Get up close and personal with American alligators in the new “Wonderful Wetlands” exhibit at Zoo Atlanta that shows you how plants and animals are connected and depend on each other. Walk over a big wooden bridge and you’ll feel like you’re in the Georgia swamp, with alligators, turtles, mosquito fish and dragonflies. Admission is $9 for adults and $5.50 for children over 3. Call (404) 624-5600 or visit the Web site at https://www.zooatlanta.org.

* One of the big exhibits this summer is at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, but the animals aren’t real. In the Dino Mountain exhibit, you can meander through a 4-acre conifer forest and encounter 20 robotic monsters from the Mesozoic period. The exhibit will run through Sept. 7. Call (760) 747-8702 or look up https://www.sandiegozoo.org.

Growing numbers of zoos have exhibits about the animals and plants from their region. The New Orleans Audubon Zoo, for example, has a special Louisiana Swamp Exhibit; the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, Ariz., focuses on desert life while the Texas Zoo in Victoria, Texas, exhibits 200 native birds and animals.

Save a hotel bill and spend the night with the animals. Many zoos, including the Bronx Zoo, the San Diego Zoo, the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo, offer sleep-over programs to give families a behind-the-scenes look at the zoo and its nocturnal animals.

Taking the Kids appears on the first and third weeks of the month.