"I want to come in!" he squeals to marketing assistant Michele Strider, who is sitting on the back of a gigantic concrete snake. She assures him he will be let into the Children's Zoo soon — Saturday to be exact.

"You can come play with us then," she says.

Artist Robin Murez hears the excited shrills of children daily at her post at the Valley Children's Zoo entrance.

It is the place where the rest of the zoo meets up with the Children's Zoo, a crossing so magnetic many people just stop and stare for several minutes.Right now, they can see the larger-than-life shards of grass jutting from the concrete floor. They are made of cast bronze, gold and green, and covered with little bugs. There is a dragonfly at eye height, and ants and spiders crawling by.

"The idea is ... they are rewarded for looking closer and discovering new things," Murez said as she stood among her shards of grass, a public art aspect of the new Children's Zoo.

On the track

If those people behind the fence could come closer, as they will soon, they would see bronze ants embedded in the concrete. Follow them, and they lead visitors through the new $12.5 million Children's Zoo.

Almost every square foot has been carefully planned and thought out. It is not only a traditional zoo but it is a playground, a classroom and a park.

"It is really about discovery," zoo Executive Director Joel Parrott said.

Check near a rock here and visitors will see the bones of an animal that a raccoon might have eaten. Follow one of the tracks of 17 species of animals embedded in the concrete and a child might find a fake animal hiding under a bush or tree.

There are lily pads suspended above water to jump on, streams and fault lines to follow and bones and bugs to discover everywhere.

And then there are the real animals.

Living exhibits

To the left of the entrance is the home of the zoo's six aldabra tortoises. While in the 1960s and'70s children could ride on the back of a tortoise named O.J. and his friends, the zoo has retired the tortoises to their own habitat and kids can now play on tortoise shells near the exhibit.

"They can crawl into a shell and feel what it is like to be a tortoise," Parrott said.

Near the tortoises are the ever-popular pair of otters, who have their own waterfall, pool and stream. The zoo will be mating the pair, Parrott said, and he hopes otter pups will soon be part of the exhibit.

While admiring the play of the otters through a Plexiglas view of the pools or playing in the otter den playground near the exhibit, visitors are likely to hear the distinguishable "hooti-hoo-hoo" squeaks of the ring-tailed lemurs, an endangered animal from Madagascar.

The gray, black and white creatures with big brown eyes will climb a playground of ropes, ladders and trees. The zoo has acquired nine of the animals and designed the display to include lessons about Madagascar, an island off Africa that is home to a wide variety of unique species.

Kids can also play on the tomato frog sculptures near the lemur's den, made to look and feel like one of the crimson-colored frogs, just bigger. The tomato frog is found only in Madagascar.

Visitors will see more reptiles, real ones, in the Children's Zoo's new Reptile Amphibian Discovery room, or "rad room" as reptile keeper Jonas Rosenthal likes to call it.

One section of the room will house lizards of the Sonoran desert such as the venomous Gila monster, the chuckwalas, whip tail lizards and desert spiny lizards. Another will be home to the endangered Panamanian Golden Frog while still another will house the frogs and lizards of the Madagascar region.

Each exhibit in the reptile room features a mural by artist David Rock, whose work nearly transports viewers into the habitat he paints.

"The idea is, you walk up, and you are lost in the exhibit," Rosenthal said.

Going batty

Perhaps the most stunning exhibit is the bat habitat, the largest in the country with a netted roof nearly 60 feet from the ground.

The Oakland Zoo has the second largest collection of bats in the country — 31 Malayan flying foxes and island flying foxes.

"I can't wait to see them fly," Parrott said as he stood on the exhibit's visitor gazebo that, once open, will literally be surrounded by bats.

Children's Zoo visitors also will have a chance see the zoo's alligators swim in a pool and get close to creepy-crawly bugs like leaf-cutter ants and black widow spiders in the bug house.

Children will be able to touch and interact with goats and sheep in the favored petting zoo, and learn how rabbits should be kept in the bunny exhibit.

The Valley Children's Zoo, named after the Wayne and Gladys Valley Foundation, which contributed $2 million to the fund-raising campaign, took nearly two years to build. It replaces the decaying mess of old buildings and broken exhibits that used to be the Oakland Zoo's Baby Zoo.

The new Children's Zoo is the final part of the zoo to be completely overhauled since it was named one of the worst zoos in the country in the 1980s. The Oakland Zoo is now considered a leader in many of its animal conservation programs.

An estimated 10 million children are expected to visit the new Children's Zoo, which was paid for in part by Measure G funds.

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