At The Zoo

I went to the zoo this weekend and it was AWESOME.

The last time you went to the zoo, you 1) were five years old 2) had your face painted like a zebra and inexplicably roared at passing pidgeons and peacocks and 3) really really wanted an ice cream cone.

With parents watching their kids and kids watching the ice cream stands, I felt like I was the only person looking at the most interesting part of any zoo - the animals.

Top 5 Favorite Animals (i.e. animals that most interest/frighten/amaze me)

1. Alligators
3 (tie). Bats
3 (tie). Penguins
4. Small Active Monkeys
5. Hippos

honorable mentions - any bird (they can fly).
- aquatic mammals (evolved from rats)

1. Alligators have a special place in my heart. When I was eight, my mother thought it would be a good idea to take me - a child notoriously afraid of everything - to GATORLAND, an "amusement" park in Orlando that specialized in alligators. After watching "The Big Jumperoo" (alligators leap 7 feet out of the water to grab chickens) and subsequently wetting myself, I refused to enter any pool in the state of Florida for fear of being dragged under water, spun around in circles, drowned, thrown under a nearby rock to soften, and then eaten three days later (i.e. death by alligator).

3 (tie). Bats and Penguins are impressive because they're freaks. A bird that swims? A mammal that flies? Birds are supposed to fly and mammals are supposed to scurry around on land (or, if they're especially sweet, swim around in water, but my fascination with aquatic mammals will have to wait for another day...). Either way, these animals, through evolutionary magic, have developed the ability to cross (successfully) into the areas reserved for members of other classes. Congratulations. For your bravery in the face of adversity, you are awarded a tie for third place on my list of sweet animals.

4. Small, active monkeys are fucking amazing. Have you seen these little fuckers? They look just like people. Just imagine what we humans must have been like before we came out of the trees and started farming and building cities: leaping around from tree to tree, eating fruit and throwing our feces at lions. Why did we come down????

5. Last but not least, I give you the hippo. Everyone thinks hippos are cute cuddly friendly herbivores. The last part is true, but it doesn't prevent them from killing more humans per year than lions, alligators, and sharks combined. No shit. There are two crucial mistakes that humans make with hippos: we 1) take boats into their mating grounds (instant death) and we 2) get between them and the water. The latter is interpreted as an attempt to cut off their escape route (a trick that lions use often) and generally inspires hippos to lunge aggressively and crush humans with their massive jaws. Not pretty.


In any case, all of my favorite animals are in one way or another represented at the Philadelphia Zoo.

Now, bear in mind that the day was HOT. The lions were lying down. The zebras were standing in the shade. The hippos, #5 on my list, were engaged in the exhausting activity of sitting underwater and moving as little as possible. No bone crushing attacks. No open jaws. No aggressive behavior at ALL. I was hoping to witness something exciting, like the untimely death of a poorly trained summer assistant who wandered between the hippo and his chlorinated pool. Nothing. Boring. Grade: D

I don't remember exactly when it happened, but at some point I decided that I was going to try to make eye=contact with as many animals as possible. My efforts had been largely frustrated (distance and heat being major impediments) as I approached the giant tortoise's pen. To my surprise and delight he turned his head as I approached, looking right at me. "Success!" I thought. Having achieved my initial goal (eye contact) so quickly, I moved swiftly to telepathy. I spent the next 15 minutes thinking that I was sending messages such as "it must be a pain in the ass carrying that huge shell around, but I guess it's good protection" or "don't you wish you were swimming right now?" only to realize that the tortoise had NOT turned his head because he wanted look at me, but because he wanted to place his head in the shade of a nearby tree. As I walked away, the tortoise didn't turn to watch me leave. Slightly miffed, I moved on. Grade: C+

The bat display at the Philadelphia Zoo is unimpressive. I understand that running a bat exhibit is no easy task: if it's well lit, the bats remain stationary. If it's dark, the people can't see the bats. Philadelphia opted for the well lit approach. Great. Sleeping rats. In fact, the most interesting part of the bat display was its proximity to the lemur cage, where a 50 year-old guy was talking authoritatively about lemurs. Hilariously, he was pronouncing lemur leh-mur instead of lee-mur, i.e. : "Oohh, look! It's the white-tailed leh-mur. Leh-murs are very good climbers. Look at that leh-mur go! Leh-murs are found in East Africa..." Etc. His poor kid is going to be in bio class one day and tell his teacher that he's mispronouncing lemur and be wrong. Like when I told people that the wind came from cars (thanks mom). Grade: B

I actually didn't see the penguins.

The small active monkeys didn't disappoint at all. I put forth all my skill at the monkey cage, attempting to communicate with my not-so distant cousin. It worked. He stopped and looked at me. Then he looked away and starting swinging from a rope and antagonizing another monkey. Then he turned around and checked to see if I was still looking at him. I was. I looked at him as if to say, "hop over here to this branch." He did it. We sat there looking at each other for like five seconds and then the monkey he had been antagonizing came over and started antagonizing him. The bond was broken, but in that five second window I swear I saw the capacity for rational thought. Grade: B+

Encouraged by my success with the monkey, I went over to the reptile house. I wanted to see if I was a parseltounge. I sat in front of the boa constrictor for about 20 minutes, waiting for it to nod and wink at me, waiting to be amazed as my lips started to hiss and spit a language that I did not know that I knew, waiting to set the boa free and watch him terrorize the group of small children who were saying that a certain snake looked like a "turd".

No such luck.

As I turned to exit the reptile house, I was momentarily paralysed by the display in the last cage: the Nile Crocodile. It was staring right at me. For a second I struggled to meet his gaze, but then, as my heart rate sped up and familiar sensations of terror coursed through my limbs, I looked away. Was I ready for this?

Refusing to yield to my stupid childish phobia, I pulled an ugly face, squared my shoulders, walked over to the window and put my middle finger on the glass right up next to his face. He didn't flinch, but he looked me right in the eye and spoke to me, as clear as can be:

"I own you, you little shit. You're so afraid of me that you barely have the courage to put your fucking hand up next to the glass. If I weren't in this cage, I would grab your fucking arm, drag you into this pool, spin you around under water until you drowned, put you under a rock and then eat you three days later when your nasty flesh had softened up a little bit."

Unfazed, I stared right back at him and replied:

"Then I guess it's too bad you're in the fucking cage."

HA.

Grade: A+

It's good to be human.