My mom, A and I took E and J-Boy to the Dallas Zoo yesterday. It was so cool. E was telling us the whole ride there about the "biggest elephant he's ever seen" - in 3 short years, how many elephants could this precious bundle of energy have seen? Apparently enough to have now categorized them by size.
So when we get there, elephants are on the agenda. But first, petting zoo. Yippee. Well, maybe more of a "yip." In the bird feeding area, one of the big "chickens" - as E refers to them - pecked his face as he leaned down to feed it a worm. The "chicken" was in reality this random exotic bird, and E's war wound was more shock than anything else, but that chicken deserves a biscuit coffin for his behavior. Well, he IS a wild bird in captivity, trapped and surrounded by people it now fears. Here's a thought: no bite-happy soldier birds in the petting zoo. Brilliant! We filled out an incident report and moved on.
Soon, we found ourselves near the monkeys. One was being tormented by a scoundrel of a squirrel, who would run the length of this tree branch just on the other side of the net from this monkey. He'd try to chase it, but it'd reach the end of that branch and leap onto another part of the tree, all the while taunting the poor monkey. Bullies...
The highlight o' the day was when we got to this other monkey area. Okay, they probably weren't monkeys. They were like orangutans or something. They had yellow on their faces and pink "bottoms." No lie. J-Boy was quick to point that out. Joy. Anyhoo...
The father monkey was standing right at the glass as we came up. As we neared it, so did a younger monkey. E and J-Boy were so enthralled at the younger monkey being this close to them, that they were startled when he suddenly...smacked the glass right by them. They jumped and laughed, and it kinda seemed like the monkey was smiling, too.
Then he did it again...and the boys smacked the glass back. This went on for a moment. I nudged A and pointed to the father monkey, watching his kid at play. It was an awkwardly touching moment. Two different species, worlds apart...both enjoying their children playing together. Magical.
So then we went on to see the gorillas. It was kinda cool, because they were so far off in the back of their little encampment at first, that the pictures I took reminded me of those Big Foot photos you see. Some large, hairy man. Blurry and too far in the distance to come to any kind of solid conclusion. However...
A quick jaunt back around to the front gave us a great view. Up close. My mom started taking pictures of a gorilla sitting against the rock when the flash must've caught his/her - didn't look under the tail to determine male or female, sorry! - eye and they came over. Right in front of the glass. Like "paparazzi time!"
We got some great photos. One I took reminded me of this book I read back in college called Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. I highly recommend it if you're a fan of "thinking" and whatnot.
Even though we saw all these cool wild animals...the boys were super happy when we finally saw the...ELEPHANTS! There they were. Hanging out with the zebras and giraffes. Like the wilds of the Serengeti in Africa. Only without all the life-threatening stuff that comes along with that.
And the giraffes, man, there was a couple there....newlyweds. Had to be. All lovey-dovey. Don't tell me love isn't a universal feeling, able to be felt by any and all of God's creatures. Cuz I got pictures that'll prove you so wrong!
Oh yea, we fed the giraffes what looked like graham crackers. This one guy ate so much, that J-Boy kept laughing and saying, "He's hungry! He's sooo hungry!" Of course, then E repeated that. So, we heard that a whole bunch.
I almost forgot...as we ventured across the zoo from one side to the other in search of "the biggest elephant" E's ever seen, there was a picture of a lion on a poster in the tunnel. It was either my mom or A who said, "Ooh, look, lions." But it was definitely J-Boy who immediately responded, "Oh, my!"
The day was so awesome. The boys' faces - and even E's "chicken"-pecked face - were priceless. I wish joy came that easy to us adults.
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