at the zoo
One of the things my boyfriend Tad and I did on my birthday (which was the best birthday ever – thank you for asking) was go to the zoo. The weather was so nice, we couldn’t resist. Neither of us had been in years.
The first animals you see when you walk into the Houston Zoo are the birds. They had all kinds of turkeys all over the place – black ones, blue ones, tons of multi-colored ones…. The little signs said things like “Pygmy Pheasant” and “Mongolian Guinea Hen”, but you know and I know what they really were: The turkeys of many colors that my mama gave to me.
okapi, okapa, life goes on
Animals fascinate me. Especially the ones at the zoo, even though I feel sorry as hell for most of them. Some seem to like being there, though. For the first time in my life, I saw okapis. They were way cuter than you see in the pictures I just linked, and they were very friendly. They strolled up to the fence and let everyone pet them, probably because people sometimes feed them, too. They had little horns covered with fuzz. On the whole, their texture was like that of those little velveteen-covered rabbit banks they sell at Walgreens for Easter. Their bodies were shiny brown like mahogony with legs striped like zebras’. They would have made beautiful rugs. But I would never wish that on them.
you wanna make her/ suicide koala
Obviously, the zoo people hadn’t yet finished constructing the koala habitats. Therefore, I really wish they had waited before obtaining koalas. I swear – they had two koalas, each in a room with a glass front, tree-picture-wallpapered sides, and a bunch of big eucalyptus branches tied together. I’m not kidding – branches propped up and tied together. With leaves tied on. Both koalas were balled up in the fake trees with their eyes closed in their pained-looking faces. (Or maybe koalas always look like that.)
“Oh, my god, that’s so sad!” I said.
“That’s fucking pathetic,” corrected Tad.
Our critique of the man-made environments didn’t end there. We were also dissatisfied with the cheetah habitat, which was basically just someone’s small-town backyard, complete with brushpiles and chain-link fence.
“He needs room to run,” said Tad.
“Right?” I said.
All the monkeys were sad and wouldn’t swing on their monkey bars. All the snakes were cramped, but some of them seemed to be in love so I guess they didn’t mind. Either that, or they had gotten tangled up and couldn’t undo themselves, and they were putting their faces close together in order to keep from getting confused about which corner of the glass cube was the lavatory.
(But I like to think they were in love.)
happy hungry hooved mammals
The giraffes were super fabulous and tall and happy-seeming. The zoo people had hung a Christmas tree upside down in their yard in a very ghetto way, but the giraffes were eating it, so I guess it was all good.
The petting zoo goats were very fat, like all petting zoo goats are. I can’t look at their incredibly distended sides without imagining them exploding in double fountains of guts and hay. They’re all very tame and let the kids do almost anything to them – straddle them, step on them, shove hay into their mouths…. Okay, well, it was me doing the last one. But I didn’t realize he was already chewing his cud.
One of them was Photo Opp Goat. He was one of the few with perfect little horns, he was roughly the height of a toddler and he stood perfectly still as parent after parent posed children alongside him and then captured his likeness. I wondered if he knew what was going on and if it heightened his self esteem.
happy horny jumpy mammals
The funniest thing happened as we were leaving the petting zoo. We saw a woman we used to work with – let’s call her Sonia. When we worked with Sonia at the Borg last year, it was common knowledge that she was cheating on her husband. Anyone passing her cube could hear her planning trysts with her boyfriend on the phone. If she didn’t care, I didn’t care, so I never thought much of it.
So we saw Sonia at the zoo with her two kids, some guy and some little girl. “Hi, Sonia,” we told her. I waited for her to notice and react to us holding hands. (Tad and I kept our relationship a secret until we both left the Borg.) She didn’t seem to notice, though, because she was too busy trying to tell us that she was at the zoo.
“Oh, hi! Are y’all at the zoo? We’re at the zoo, too! We just thought we’d come to the zoo today….” she says, glancing at the man with her, who is studiously looking at the passersby. “Yeah, we just thought we’d…. Heh heh. Yeah. This is my brother! My brother and his daughter. We decided to come to the zoo together today. You know, so… the kids…”
“Cool,” we told her, “See you later.”
If Sonia wants to go to the zoo with her lover and their respective kids, it’s all right with me.
