day 8

Today marks day 8 of the teacher's strike. Or is that day 80? It all seems the same to me. So, what else to do, but go to the zoo. Again. With the Andersons. Now, for those of you who "zoo" with us, our crowd likes to be at the zoo at opening time (9:30). When Meghan and I looked at our watches, it was 11:30. Guess how many animals we'd seen? FOUR! The flamingos; lemurs; gorillas; and jaguar. Oh, we did see the zebra at the Savannah too. Not too many animals in a 2 hour time frame. That is because en route to Bug World (which I despise), the quartet of children decided to play in the forest play area. They were running through the tunnels. At first they were pretending to be ants. Later we figured out it was not a replica of ant tunnels, but beavers (I think). They ran up, down, around. They climbed up the rope spider web. They spent a good hour frolicking happily in this area. They battled good and evil. They protected the tunnels. And no one was bossy. And no one argued. There was finally peace, love, and happiness amongst the adults watching and the children (who should've been in school) playing. In the end we bribed them to eat lunch and see just a few more animals.

As we were eating our "brought from home" lunches and Meghan was ordering her standard pretzel, three unusual zoo-goers passed by. Make that three unusual zoo-goers and their dog (who was on a regular leash and was a bit unruly). To describe the men in more detail, read Meghan's blog for today. But, let me just say, I'm sure if I would have given them a hug, the odor d'alcohol and body odor would have rubbed off on me. Now, how they were able to get their black dog inside the zoo...claiming it was a "helper" dog, I'll never know. But as they teetered off (with security close on their tails), one rambled something about "if this would'a been a white dog, we wouldn'a had no problem". I guess the zoo must discriminate against black dogs. Wonder if the Sun Bears, Sloth Bears, and Gorillas will have to find a new home, in exchange for an arctic hare and other white animals. Hmmmm.