The weather reports this weekend indicated that today might be free-of-rain. I made my plans for a zoo assault. I began prepping early, taking a shower late last night. Singing songs about the Zoo, and washing my hair. That turned out to be the Land of 5000 Heart Attacks. After I turned off the water, I could still hear a slow hiss, which sounded an awful lot like the pipes leaking in the wall. I gave it a few minutes, tried to empty the diverter, turned the water on and off... the usual suspects. Still the sound of water running behind the wall. I combed my hair hoping it would stop. At this point normally my cat would have jumped in the tub and started licking the faucet, but he was staying away as if the water was running.
I checked downstairs to see if water was flooding through the ceiling. Then I did the unthinkable. I called my parents at 11:30PM because I didn't know what else to do. This is tantamount to a National Guard deployment. My father sent me around the house to turn off the water main, then the hot water heater, and to start taking apart the faucet. (All of which was done with me naked and still dripping. You're welcome, my neighbours!) As I finally got the faucet plate off and could see into the wall, something wet and sticky hit my foot. It turned out to be shaving cream. Huh. That's weird, I didnt use any in my shower...
Yeaaaaah, it turned out the watery gurgly hissing sound I was hearing was the ten-year-old bottle of girly shaving cream having finally rusted out enough to let loose its foamy contents. Disaster averted. Also thwarted: sleep for both me and my parents. Hooray for the Zoo!
The weather turned out to be super clear. Here's a view of my neighbourhood from the hill on which the Zoo resides. Or maybe I'm just not used to seeing things this early and it always looks like this. Who knows.
My hope in getting up early was that only the most hardcore of nannies were out of the house at 9AM. It turned out it wasn't too bad. Apparently there's a gang of senior citizen walkers that owns the zoo before noon. They all have special name tags and know each other. Also many of them a) know a lot about the exhibits and layout and b) are like-minded about the shrieking. As the morning wore on, it was a little like being caught between Jet and Shark territory.
I don't like penguins. I think they're the mimes of the bird world. That said, they really like preening and posing for photos. Probably because of all the p's.
The Zoo has a new tiger exhibit which I was excited to see. It went in just last year and was much ballyhoo'd. As with other ballyhoo'd endeavors, it turned out to be a disappointment. There are two viewing areas through which one would be able to see tigers if they wanted to come out. One of the Sharks explained to me that the lions had been recently allowed to expand their territory behind the tiger cage, and now the tigers are constantly trying to get back into their den enclosure, where their mother and father are. If you stood at just the right corner, you could see them pacing back and forth and trying to get home. Lions and tigers only hang out in the same forests in Oz, other than that they're mostly relegated to separate continents. Mostly what I could see was a seething mass of stripes and bamboo.
When I made a second pass by the exhibit on the way out, one of the tigers had given up and was laying on a rock. Excuse the reflections of the garishly clad people standing next to me. Most of these photos are shot through glass, which has its drawbacks in terms of haze and reflection, but beats bars and chain link any day.
Since the tigers were mostly a bust, I headed to the other cats. The jaguar was hiding and eating, but I managed to get a decent picture of him looking up.
The Snow Leopard had also just finished eating something large and meaty that I like to hope was human, but looked more like a dinosaur. He was looking smug enough to have eaten a toddler though.
Also in the large tails section: some lemurs and wallabies.
This Gorilla looked like he was doing impressions. I'm not sure if it was Bogart or Groucho Marx, or something in between, but it made me laugh. Animals! They're just like us! The rest of the monkeys were also chowing down. It seems that morning is when animals eat, so this was a pretty good time to be there.
This zookeeper was very slowly feeding this sloth, while the meerkats looked on covetously from their enclosure.
This is a baby Komodo Dragon, who was hiding out in the trees. Flashback to Happy Hour with my parents.
One of my friends requested lots of wolf pictures. Below is a wealth of wolves, and one warthog. If you want to see the rest of the photos, click here for my Flickr album. The Giraffes were all still in their barn, so I missed seeing most of the Savannah animals. Hopefully next time there is a pre-summer, non-spring-break sunny day I can head back for those.
