Someone told me
It’s all happening at the zoo.
I do believe it,
I do believe it’s true.
Well, I do now.
What a day we had at the zoo yesterday!
My sister is visiting, which, let’s be honest, can kind of be a zoo in and of itself. (Whenever I type “itself”, I wonder if it should be “its self”–’cause that makes a lot of sense to me.) Cathie-Mom (i.e. Mom on the Sarah’s side of things) made us members of the zoo when we first moved here. I hadn’t been to the zoo since… since elementary school? Dunno. Anyway, we’ve been a few times now and I have found that, really, despite my expectations, I really enjoy the zoo.
Sarah, Sheel and I spent much of the day at the zoo switching between laughing and fascinated… Sometimes both at the same time!
Your attention please, as I now present to you the top top four interesting/fascinating incidents of our most recent visit to the zoo:
4. The Preening Peacock.
Okay, well, not preening, actually—but I like the way it sounds. “Presenting Peacock” was another option… but I’m pretty sure presenting is something females do. What we actually saw was a male peacock giving a full mating display. The peacocks at the zoo roam around freely, and just as we were leaving for the day, Sarah said, “look at that!”—and there it was, NBC logo three dimensions and full color!
As kids Sheel and I would often get peacock feather fans/decorations from India, so I already knew how pretty peacock feathers are—but I’d never seen a real-live peacock open his feathers and display them. As I mentioned earlier, the peacocks roam freely so they’re somewhat tame. We were able to get within a few feet of him (probably could have gotten closer, but we didn’t want to get in the way of a male, any male, attempting to mate) and the colors, textures and patterns of the peacock were absolutely beatiful. We probably spent somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes, just admiring it. I got a couple of pictures. Wait—I can insert images in this thing, can’t I? Hold on…
See? Pretty as a peacock. That should have been the title of this section! Pretty as a Peacock.
Look at the rich blue of the throat.
Look at the layers of green behind his head. With the light green outlined with the dark green.
Look at the black and white pattern on his sides; how it contrasts with the rest of his colors.
Look at the striking markings around his eyes.
Look at his cool hat (as Sheel called it) with blue circles at the ends.
Look at the big long feathers of his tail–the oranges, the yellows, the blues and the greens.
Sarah remarked later that a peacock is one of those things that you can put a name and a picture to at a very young age—so it’s something that, when you actually get to see a real one and take some time to look at it, actually looks very different from what you thought you knew.
3. Corky the Bear
I’ve been told that something extremely cute is a polar bear swimming. I cannot personally attest to this—primarily because I am a man, and men don’t say such things; and secondarily, because I’ve never seen it. So in hopes of seeing such a thing, we went to the Polar Bear exhibit where we saw a few very wet looking bears, which meant it was likely they were done with their evening swim.
We saw 2 pretty remarkable things at this pen. First was Mean Bear (I call him Mean Bear because the other male bear, who I call Corky the Bear, kept a wide birth of MB). Floating in their “pond” was a large plastic barrel about 3/4 filled with water. I imagine that it would take me, you and another person to pull it out of the water. Mean Bear, however, was able to pull it out of the water with his face. With his face! Polar Bears look cute, but seeing the strength of those jaws and the giant, giant paws was enough to let me know that behind that gentle, cuddly teddy-bear softness was a man-killer.
I have decided never to fight a polar bear.
Although… that does bring us to the second bear: Corky the Bear. After spending about 10 minutes at one end of the pen with Sarah and Sheel trying to coax mean bear to take a swim, we noticed that at the other end of the pen was a bit of activity which required a closer look.
You see, we had noticed Corky the Bear. I should have taken a video of this. Corky had his back towards the guests, and on all fours, would take 7 and a half steps forward, and then, with his paw in mid-air, about to complete the 8th step, would stop, and reverse, taking 7.5 steps backwards. And then Corky the Bear would do it again.
And then Corky the Bear would do it again.
And then Corky the Bear would do it again.
and again.
and again.
and… Well… You see.
Though not the funniest thing we saw at the zoo—it was funny enough that we spent about five minutes just watching him, alternately fascinated, flummoxed, and laughing.
Later we learned from one of our friends that he witnissed the same bear running in circles for a good long while.
I think, maybe, I’d fight that bear.
2. The Grande Dame Orangutan
The most dramatic presentation came as we were travelling through the Hubbard Gorilla Valley. It’s an indoor walkway with a variety of indoor and outdoor monkey exhibits. They’re currently building a giant outdoor exhibit for the Orangutans, the Orangutan Forest, replete with towering, many-branched fake trees (which look very real–it’s been cool to watch them being built) and long vines which hang to the ground.
Anyway, we neared the window which looks out at an older exhibit space currently displaying orangutans… Or as was the case on this day, orangutan. And, boy did she know she was the star attraction. Looking out it appeared the pen was empty, but then about 50 feet from our window, from a little nook in the wall to our right, we saw an orangutan lean back from her hips from a sitting position, so we could see her head, and part of her upper body. Obviously registering our presence at the window, she leaned forward out of site, and then reappeared, approaching our window.
Slowly, methodically, dramatically, she made her way to our window. Finally having arrived, she sat down just in front of us and took us in. Once she was certain that we were captivated, she began to lick the window. This, too, she did slowly, methodically, dramatically… She started at about the middle of the window and licked across it towards me for about 3 feet or so.
When she got closer to me, I took out my camera and pointed it at her. Just before I clicked, I could see the glint of a smile in her eyes. She knew exactly what she was doing. Playing us like a fiddle.
Having traversed the window with her tongue, she gave us one last look, seemed satisfied with her performance, turned around and ambled on back to her dressing room.
I was fairly convinced that the she had put the performance on just for me. 10 minutes later, though, I was sad to find her giving the same performance for another group of people. I was heartbroken.
1. Screaming Little Person
I write this final passage without any hope of conveying to you how funny a scene we witnessed. But Sarah and I still laugh out loud if either of us mention it. Please, bear with me.
Sheel, Sarah and I sat watching a pair of young orangutans frolic about. The female wrapping herself up in some burlap and rolling around; the male climbing to the top of tree and hanging from the ceiling. Boys will be boys and girls will be girls, I guess. Their pen was located just after the long and very cool Gorilla exhibit.
Captivated by the scene, we were startled by a child’s scream. Not a shriek, but a single, high-pitched, monotonal scream. First of all, in a zoo full of children shrieks are common–nothing to investigate. In this case, though, the scream was long enough for us to realize something must be up, turn, look to find the source of the scream, look to find the stimulus to the scream, return the source of the scream and continue to watch as the scream proceeded for a couple more seconds.
The source of the scream was a three-or-four-year-old boy sitting in a stroller. The whole time he was screaming (which was a long time) he sat stock-still, his mouth remained a constant, adorable but horrified “O”, and he was transfixed by what he was seeing. That image alone is enough to make my cheeks hurt from laughing. Oh, he was screaming for *so* long.
The thing that completes the scene, though, is the stimulus to the scream. As I followed his gaze, my view was originally obstructed by a group of people walking by; moving past, they revealed the cause of this utter terror: an 8 foot tall etching of a gorilla’s face in an opaque, black, glass wall.
This poor kid, already terrorized from his tour of the gorilla exhibit, now finds himself face to face with an uncaged, GIANT version of what must have been to him a very, very scary animal. Can you imagine!
After numerous people (including the three of us) assured the kid that everything was alright and that it wasn’t real, we laughed and laughed and laughed.
And laughed.
I’m laughing now.
Really. I’m laughing.
That poor kid.
Oh, I’m laughing!
Well. That’s the story of us at the zoo. There were other things: the bird which got spooked by Sarah’s sun umbrella, the cool web-footed beaver in his den, the transfixed-by-the-color-red bobcat… but I think I’ve written enough.
That poor kid!