Today, being July the 10th, is my grandad's 73rd birthday. To celebrate, we went to the zoo. I baked him a cake last night, because I am such a fantastic granddaughter, and iced it this morning. It did look nice, even if I do say so myself. It was just a plain ol' butter cake, but I baked it in ring-tin, and iced it this morning with a butter icing, and decorated it with milk chocolate buttons. As I walked through the crowded cafe towards our table, he gave me a puzzled look, and when I sat down he said, 'Feeling a bit hungry there, eh?'. (The plate had a food covering on it.) The good quarter of an hour I spent annoying the family with the electric beater last night was well worth his smile and thanks. I love the zoo. I love the animals, and really enjoy walking around the paths. But still, I always feel sad thinking that the small enclosure I see in front of me is their world- a prison. The zoo is a great institution , and it promotes conservation and animal welfare, but man-made nature can never beat the real thing. I think it's better when animals are born into the zoo, instead of coming from the wild. However, alive is better than dead, and that's the reality of life in the wild these days. Deforestation, pollution, poaching and hunting- even the jungles most ferocious beast can't survive these predators.
Though, my apologies, I'm not here to rant about animal rights and the environment (not tonight, at any rate), so I will veer back to the topic that I was on.
This morning, at approximately 11.25, I fed a giraffe a stick of celery from my hands. I've done the giraffe encounter before when I was younger, but it's one of those things that doesn't get old. Giraffes are incredible. They're beautiful. Their huge black eyes framed by long lashes. Their graceful neck. One day, I wouldn't mind seeing some of them in the wild.
As we walked along the Pridelands walkway, biding our time until my grandparents arrived, we saw zebras, lion, flamingos, ostriches, and rhinos. Yes, all common things to see in a zoo, but pretty amazing if you really think about it.
We crawled through the meercat tunnels and I got freaked out by the porcupine (he was huge, and just kept staring at me).
We saw a hippo get out of a mud pool (it involved a lot of effort, you know) and saw a little blue penguin stare up at the crowds, shivering.
We watched the otters showing off, an squeaking in an interesting way, which I'm sure is natural, but not what you would expect.
We saw the baby monkeys and their mothers, and watched them play and snuggle.
The ring-tailed lemurs were sunning themselves- the funniest sight. Arms out, sitting in a very human-like way, head lolling; just gorgeous.
On the monkey playground I randomly jumped onto my older brother's back and he started running along the balancing beam which was sitting on springs. Needless to say, we fell off, and a very public and embarrassing way.
Even the time in Darwin's Cafe made me smile. My cake was a hit, and there was a display on the wall all about palm oil- with contact numbers and everything! There was a big sign, much to my pleasure, saying, We're endeavouring to be palm oil free- are you?
And they even had wooden knives and paper plates- recyclable, yay!
On the way home we decided to stop at the local pioneer village, Jack and I subsequently ran around like mad, having a grand old time. I picked up rubbish, for the second time is as many days- doing a good deed for the environment, and all. When Jack started to eat grass, we went home.
It was a great day- highly enjoyable. It got me thinking about a career in zoo-keeping.
As they say, you learn something every day, and today that was: there are twelve tonnes of salt circulating at any one time in the sea lion enclosure- bet you didn't know that, did ya'?
No comments:
Post a Comment