A Day at the Zoo

After a longer than expected run out to CompUSA with Lush so he could get my opinion on the computer system he wants to purchase, I sped over to Dogger's as we were to head over to the Milwaukee Zoo. I'd never been there before so I was excited at the prospect of my first visit. It would be Miss Regan's second. We got there and put her in the stroller. After wandering about aimlessly for a few minutes, I finally capitulated and asked someone where we could find a wheelchair for Mel. Doing so, we got everyone situated and we were off. Miss Regan was all excited.



I think we went to the aviary first. Luckily, no birds shat on our heads and, instead, we got to watch them flying around. Here's an ibis. I think it is, anyway.



From there, we just wandered around - aimlessly, for the most part. When we saw the sealions, "Sealion 2" immediately jumped into my head and I couldn't get it out. I started referring to both of them as Cecil. Here's a photo of him:



Along the way, we saw some colorful peacocks.



Beautiful plumage!

Regan really enjoyed the fishes.



And the goats.



Now, this is a jaguar. It just sat there motionless except for blinking its eyes.



Dogger and I personally like primates the best.







Here's Regan next to a statue of one of her ancestors.



She also enjoyed the slides as well as the puddles.





I nearly creamed my jeans when I saw this:



I really need to figure out how to use my camera because a lot of my pictures turned out for shite. Some of Regan on the merry-go-round are passable but lots of various birds and tigers are horribly out of focus. Stupid glass walls! But we all had a good time. Regan would have had no problem hanging out in the goat petting yard all day or in that puddle. And I suspect that she could have sat there in her stroller ogling the fish until she fell asleep. For her part, Mel loved the whole joint and enjoyed watching her daughter running around and exploring the place. It's too bad she was confined to the wheelchair. Dogger and I enjoyed the apes and monkeys the most, methinks. I'm not sure why, but they just seem to hold the greatest fascination for us. Perhaps this is because they are our closest relatives. The jaguars and cheetahs may be more graceful and aethetically pleasing with their spots and stripes, but looking at and oberserving fellow primates gives me a feeling of kinship and a great sense of awe. We are most genetically similar to those simians and it is just amazing to contemplate the fact that we and those gorillas behind the glass have a common ancestor.

Of course, I also felt sorry for the animals - being confined as they are. Hell, I'm sure most of them either didn't give a hoot or were happy to have a life of leisure with three squares a day but I still couldn't help but think that those elephants would rather have had room to roam and not have a million spectators looking on at them.