Photo Friday: Bears in New York City

New York City; June 2010

I promised that I would have some animal-themed posts from my trip to New York City and I don’t plan to disappoint. So far I’ve shared photos of gorillas from Bronx Zoo, now it’s time for some bear action.

Central Park is full of fun statues. Earlier in the day I had visited Alice and her Wonderland friends and Hans Christian Anderson with the Ugly Duckling. I ran across this statue just before meeting fellow travel bloggers for a behind-the-scenes tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This famous fairytale trio of the Three Bears – sans Goldilocks – lives just around the corner from the southern end of the museum. I had to wait for quite a while before I managed to get a shot without children in it (the kids were photogenic but I didn’t want to get into the whole parental permission thing).

The remaining two photos are from the Bronx Zoo – the first is of a polar bear and the second of a pair of brown bears. I felt really sorry for the polar bear in the filthy heat – he seemed distressed and kept pacing the enclosure and rubbing his fur against the cement wall. It had been hot and humid for days too. Poor thing! The brown bears looked quite a bit happier and there was also more shade and greenery in their enclosure.

This is my contribution to Photo Friday, a weekly blogging event hosted by Debbie of Delicious Baby. Please take a look at the other contributions this week on her site. Check out my Arctic posts to see polar bears in the wild.