We Zoo-ed!
Recently Alan and I made use of our zoo memberships. For a long while they were doing a pretty awesome job of just taking up space in our wallet. A handy little guilt trip was triggered every time when went to the store. And since we need food to survive, we go to the store at least once a week and therefore suffered the agonies of guilt as we opened the wallet to pay and a little panda bear face peered back at us over the leather/pleather/whatever material the wallet is made of, pocket."We should go sometime." Alan would say.
I'd sigh and stare down into the wallet at our memberships, my own Mother should be so good at making me feel that guilty.
"Yes we should, sometime." And then we'd close the wallet and munch our way through the groceries, happily making shots of chocolate and whatnot, while the whole time the cards languished in the wallet unused, forgotten....until the next store trip.
I am not sure where the time goes, I don't understand how it gets eaten up so fast, but half a year can flip by easily and the downhill slide towards the holidays starts happening. Time picks up even more speed as we cross the halfway mark of July and if it was hard to "find the time" to do something in the first 6 months of the year then it's damn near impossible in the last 6 months.
But the other day a wonderful thing happened. A pocket of time just unfolded in front of us like a gift from the Universe. The couple whose schedule continually rotates around the clock found themselves up and about starting their day at 4 in the morning. By 10:00 am they were done of all the things that HAD to be done for the day. The pocket of time was so perfect and beautiful, a week day moment of early day time with which to do ANYTHING, it left us staggered. So many possibilities.
"We could go to the hardware store!"
No, no, we had to think bigger, this window of time felt bigger than a trip to the hardware store. This was bigger than trying espresso at a local coffee shop we'd never been to, better than a movie outing at the theater. The flavor of this pocket of time came to us after we chewed it over for a moment. Almost in awe of it's perfectness, feeling a little clutch of panic chasing on it's heels as the longer we thought about what to do the more of that perfect time ticked away.
It was Alan who dared speak the words into the hush of the car. "We could go to the zoo......."
The zoo?
You mean, not just let the plastic membership cards remain as place holders in our wallet, not just let them be little guilty reminders that we paid money for something we hadn't used yet this year? Could we? Should we?
Hell yeah we should could and would. We were rebels we were. We snatched that hunk of time by the throat and told it what we were going to do. We were going to see adorable wild animals in the confines of pretty man made cages and we were going to do it today and give those cards the shock of their life when they were exposed to day light for the first time.
So we went to the zoo.
Out of curiosity before I picked out some of the 340 plus photos I took that day to share on my blog I did a quick look on Google, doing an image search using the keywords "San Diego Zoo". The results were 1,480,000.
That's a lot of photos of the San Diego Zoo......so here are a few more. If you look hard you can virtually see my few contributions teetering on the top of the internet pile of photos.
I am always of the opinion more is more better. If one photo of a Koala bear is cute than half a million oughtta be down right heart achingly adorable. This is a fact. Perhaps not scientifically proven yet but just look at people with kids. Have you ever seen a proud Mama take ONE photo of their precious little human? Of course not, more is better. And that's my reasoning behind 29 separate photos of the Koala bears alone.Finally getting to the zoo was very satisfying. We spent about 5 hours there and I only got sun burned a little. But that's good news, that's the hallmark of a good tourist, sun burn and camera permanently attached to one's hand. Constantly staring at the world through a lens rather than just your eyes. Gulping down water and ignoring the cries of our feet calling out "Mercy! Mercy." A little sweat, a lot of pointing and a ton fun, we were excellent zoo tourists.
The giraffes were my favorite part. I had no idea as I walked around a little turn in the path and spied the long necked giraffes in the distance that nothing was separating me and them but a little fence and a ditch.
Even though there were no signs expressly forbidding jumping the fence and hopping the ditch to fling one's arms around the legs of the most beeeeeeautiful giraffes in the world I suspected that it would be frowned upon. I probably have permanent fence stomach now from leaning so hard over the rail to be as close to the giraffes as possible. Luckily Alan is very good at keeping me balanced, in more ways than one.I took a lot of photos of the giraffes as well, in fact 40 photos of the giraffes alone.
On occasion I love math. I like knowing that if I took 29 photos of Koalas and 40 photos of giraffes than that means I can mathematically prove that I love giraffes 37.93% more than Koalas.
That sounds about right to me.

Labels: giraffes, humor, san diego zoo, slice of life


















