One of the consequences of aging is settling into passive entertainment like TV. So I levered myself off the couch this morning and went to the Doorly Zoo, our biggest tourist draw besides the Iowa casinos on the Missouri. I knew this was to be the most pleasant day this week after our summer of 90s, certainly the coolest, even though I usually choose Monday regardless, knowing that Monday is the best day to go anywhere except museums, almost universally closed then. I also knew I had to be there at opening, 9:30, because I would be wading through hundreds of children, which I wouldn't mind at all except that we are a nation of indulgent parents, which is why the number of "Do Not" signs grows every time I go, even though they are largely ineffective when a young mother allows her three-year-old to crawl over a fence and start over a hedge separating visitors from the penguin pond by the giraffe complex before retrieving him. Several of the new little warnings resulted from a recent event out at the Wildlife Safari halfway to Lincoln, allied to Doorly, when a mother and her youngster (four, I think) climbed over the low barrier fence and the child stuck his fingers through the steel net fencing and got some fingers chomped off by a wolf. (Some of the new Doorly signs specifically warn of being bitten.) I would guess the mother wants to sue or will, though such chutzpah deserves to be chucked out of court summarily and the mother somehow fined. And children still insist on pounding on the glass, yelling, and standing precariously on ledges and rocks at the Doorly, their parents in another dimension apparently. The zoo is building a new Butterfly and Insect Pavilion to open next May. Having been astonished by the fluttering beauties of Iowa State's Reiman Gardens' Butterfly House, I cannot imagine the Doorly hordes trooping through with a 1,000 butterflies, even if the news item said these fragile palettes live only a few weeks. Perhaps it won't be too bad, though children were forcefeeding the allegedly 400 parakeets, cockatiels, doves, and quails with the dollar wooden food-glob sticks sold at the entrance of the new Budgie Cage. I think if I were an animal/bird at Doorly, I would want to flee to Madagascar too. And I also fault adults, such as those use flashbulbs in the Kingdom of the Night. A Homer Simpson "Doh!" to you all.
Regardless, every time I go, I have new pleasures, as the zoo constantly improves its landscaping from the gardening lush despite our June of .36 inches of rain to the waterfalls that more and more creatures have, like the tigers and the bears, water splashing everywhere to mute the noise. And I have the chances for all kinds of new observations, noticing how the polar bear looked as if it were backstroking but was really using a paw to push off the vertical steel supports between the heavy glass panes on its pool or how the flamingoes made perfect calligraphic esses with their necks when they reared their heads back or how the giraffe looked as if it were wearing kneepads and walked with the two legs on a side, i.e., stepping forward with the right front and back legs and then the left front and back legs.
My favorite exotic animal is the fossa, a mongoose cousin that looks very much like a long, low cat creature, nocturnal and hence in Kingdoms of the Night where I started. It was asleep, but I was pleased in the American Swamp section at the size of two beavers, probably the biggest I've ever seen (and we've had beaver ponds built around Center on the creeks) so that I understood why the West was explored and settled by trappers when beaver pelts made the most fashionable men's hats. Nothing of interest in the Nursery, unfortunately. The old Cat Complex (we are getting a new one of those, though the cheetahs are already in a small outdoor area by the giraffes) had some supremely bored lions and tigers and some lively fisher cats, which look very much like our feral cats times three in size, where three tiger cubs cavorted the last time I visited. A tiger (my Oriental zodiac sign) was playing with a large blue rubber ball in a rectangular pool in an outdoor area, so much for superstitions about cats not liking water. Unfortunately, I am most aware of how zoos are preserving endangered species when I see the cats, annihilated throughout the world, including the extremely elusive snow leopard, the subject of one of Peter Matthiessen's best, most moving, spiritual books.
A magic animal for me, particularly because it's a surprising member of the weasel family, rather like the only white sheep among a herd of black sheep, is the highly intelligent, playful, tool-using otter, of which I made a large drawing I have in my living room as a kind of House Spirit. For once the two river otters were moving around--it's always an I Ching moment on whether animals will be asleep or not--and their only competition in the pool is the penguin, as the one otter seemed effortlessly jet-propelled on his back without any polar bear pushing-off or other back strokes. Later I hurried through the aquarium, much too crowded, when I did stop to watch the penguins, seemingly electrified by their audience or else full of Viagra or Starbuck's strongest or some other stimulants, for they've never seemed swifter, hurtling up into the air while swimming or slingshotting through an ice hole to land standing. Unhappily, I didn't see the aquarium's most intelligent creature, the octopus, whose documentaries have made me a huge fan.
I did go through the Garden of the Senses, always intoxicated by the brilliant parrot colors as they sit squawking on their garden perches like technicolor extravaganzas of saturated colors Matisse loved, only the brilliantly blue and raucously noisy big hyacinth macaws caged. And I certainly went through the big Aviary where I saw the dozens of fledglings in the nesting trees of the egrets, scarlet ibises, roseate spoonbills over the flock of flamingoes. I also saw a new bird I couldn't find any identification for, and a docent demonstrating various feathers to children knew what I was talking about but didn't know what it was either: the size of a green heron or a boxy partridge, a peculiarly beautiful off-white with black wings and a black band extending from the wings so that it looked as if it were wearing an opera cape tied by a broad ribbon at the shoulders. Talk about the curse of always wanting to know: I spent the afternoon patiently looking at Internet bird photos and going through my several birding books, of the world and of the U.S., never able to find it. Doh!
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