Lion Bait

I almost had a heart attack at the zoo today.

After a nice snowfall last night, we had a very brisk day. Things cleared up this afternoon and we decided it would be fun to go to the zoo for a little while to get some fresh air. There were low clouds on Cheyenne Mountain, which I always think is cool:

I also thought these leaves were pretty:

We don't normally go to the zoo at the end of the day, but as it turns out it was the perfect time. There was barely anyone else there AND it was close to feeding time, so the animals were really active. Especially the big cats. They were ready to eat. And Skylar looked like a yummy pink marshmallow.

Two of the lions paced back and forth, keeping their eyes on her.

Even though they were on the other side of inch thick glass, their enormous size and the intensity of their stare gave me the creeps. They were watching us. I've never been so close to one before. I also found it a little unnerving that there was 3 foot crack in the glass where one of them had tried to get through.
She didn't know that they wanted her for dinner, she thought they were fascinating (which they were) and she wasn't scared a bit.

We walked to the other side of the exhibit to check out the rest of the harem:
And then it happened. In a split second the pacing lioness we had been watching dashed over, lunged right at Skylar and swatted at the exact place where her head was:
In that moment I forgot the glass was there and I thought she was going to eat my baby, so I screamed. Then Skylar cried. It was some serious zoo drama. The onlookers certainly thought so.

I would not want to run into one of these in the wild:
Maybe I should just go ahead and scratch African Safari off of my To-Do-Someday list.