Catching Up I: Snooze at the Zoo


Setting up the tent
Originally uploaded by V'ron
OK, time to catch up with August entries. And first off, the kids and I did something we've been wanting to do for years -- the annual "Snooze at the Zoo" event. You sing up way back in April, hope to god you get good weather in August, and then you camp out at the Zoo. It's a lovely fundraiser for the zoo -- but I was hoping for a little more noisy activity.

They put you round Lake Evinrude, probably for precisely that reason -- you're far enough away from the really noisy critters so that little ones don't get freaked out. But that didn't stop the blowhard two tents away who thought it was fun and clever to scare the piss out of his kids by growling at them (causing their screams... at 10:30 at night). Still, it was a cool event. There's nothing like waking up at sunrise and walking over to the bear cave and see them getting up too.

Plus, you do get to see behavior shortly after closing you don't normally get to see: in this case, we got to check out kangaroos, at least four of them, with baby joeys in their pockets. I usually never see this. They're just usually hanging out in the yard, not even bouncing around.

But the coolest part hs been a recent addition to the zoo -- The Language of Conversation, a project to permanently install poetry tucked into nooks and cranniesthroughout the zoo. I haven't seen them all yet, but the poets range from Frost and Whitman types (of course) to native american chants, all about animals and the land we share with them. Its worth it just to look for the poetry amongst the life.

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