A small twin-spot octopus.

For more than twenty years with only a few exceptions, my family has visited either the Brookfield Zoo or the Milwaukee County Zoo on Thanksgiving and / or Christmas. This year, we were particularly interested in seeing the koala bears at Brookfield, so on Tuesday I checked the website to ensure their habitat would be open — and learned that the zoo is now closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Just like that, a tradition ended.

We visited on Friday for Holiday Magic, an event that was a pale imitation of previous iterations.