Yeah, I know. I SUCK at Photoshop. I don’t pretend otherwise. The Los Angeles Zoo is always a place to see humans acting badly as much as it is a place to oggle the lazy, indifferent wild animals who sit or sleep or weave back and forth in place, as the lone elephant does every time we visit. Two things happen with the animals. The first is that they’re mostly sleeping. The second is that, if it’s the afternoon, they anticipate their feeding as the one bright spot in their day. They probably don’t do much mating, they can’t hunt, their lives are no longer threatened, they can’t fly (oh, the poor Red Tail Hawk) and so, like most of us humans, they have narrowed life’s pleasures down to sitting around and waiting for food.
Emma and two of her pals (all three now wear specs, poor near-sighted dears) experienced Spring Fling, as Easter event that drew such a big crowd, we were forced to stand in line for an hour just to buy tickets. Once inside, it was the usual hoard of annoyed parents and their screaming children. I witnessed a spanking. Just one this time. It involved cotton candy. What must the animals think of us?
They made bunny ears and waited to pat real rabbits, after which the youngest girl of the three kept repeating “okay, now let’s go wash our hands,” as if they were seconds from succumbing to a flesh eating virus you only get from touching live rabbits, “okay, let’s go wash our hands!” After the very disappointing Spring Fling event, we wandered our usual trek around the zoo but this time the brand new Gorilla habitat was finished. It is as nice as the new one for the chimps and the orangutans. The gorillas are a sight to behold. There was at least one male silverback and a female. The male was up in the female’s grill, naturally, not really letting her do much. When it came time for feeding, however, both the silverback and the female stood on their legs to look over the fence in hopes of catching a glimpse of the food person. No such luck. So they’d stand around and try to avoid the gawking humans. Moments later they’d water out, stand up on their legs like the bipeds they were born to evolve into, and check things out. Nope, no feeding guy. We never saw them get fed but were content with having glimpsed that rare event of bipedalism among the great apes.
This brings me to my number one pet peeve (so to speak) at the zoo. People who scream at the animals without using proper pronouns or correct terms. This includes “look at the monkey” when referring to apes of any kind. But it also includes, “hey, swim sea lion!” Or “Hi Mr. Monkey! HI!!! Hey, monkey! Hey!” The yelling and screaming thing at animals should be discouraged at all costs. It is annoying and embarrassing.
This poor little creature seems to say it all.
Meanwhile, I probably almost killed the three kids by letting them have an all junk foods day.  It was a disaster in the end because, my god, look at what candy can do.
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