Writing
| Zoos |
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I love zoos. Buried in my dark cynical being there's a small child who absolutely adores day trips to the zoo to see the weird and wacky creatures. For the full day trip experience there should be a short road trip, while it may be more environmentally friendly to take public transport, it just doesn't feel right. Just before departure there should be a certain amount of running around and shouting, making sure that you are fully equipped for all eventualities, from torrential downpour to being stranded in the car for 3 days. I guess for full family car journey memories there should be singing, particularly of "Daddy's taking us to the zoo", but it's probably a nicer day for everyone if this is avoided. Excitement builds as the brown signs get closer together, the roads get narrower and the zoo approaches. Upon arrival and negotiation of the car park you should focus as little as possible on the handing over swathes of cash, confusion over gift aid and whether to contribute to the guerrilla fund and instead start considering the plan of the day. You have to find out the times and location of feedings and shows and carefully constructing an itinerary to match. The shows are a great opportunity to fulfil your educational requirement for the day, but also to sit down and rest poor old aching feet. The plan will likely go out the window inside of an hour, but it's a nice idea. Now you can set off for the zoo, trying to resist the temptation to head straight for your favourite animals and skip the boring bits like insects and reptiles. For the next several hours of wondering around the most frequent utterances are "can anyone see it?", "where's it hiding?" and "is there anything actually in here?". It's like a real life game of Where's Wally, where Wally is wearing camouflage and isn't actually necessarily in the picture at all. I have to admit I'm not a terribly responsible zoo visitor. I don't want to learn about stuff, I only have a vague interest in what animals are and rarely care where they're from, what they eat or what eats them. I do like trivia though. I'm a sucker for animals with silly names and am amused by any story involving animals breaking things. I like being talked at by keepers, but I don't want to have to read anything more than 2 bullet points. My inner 6 year-old doesn't have much of an attention span. I insist on visiting every enclosure in the zoo, but I do of course have favourites which fall into two categories –calming or cute. I think there's something very peaceful about large animals like elephants or giraffes. They live at a completely different pace to us; plodding through life on the assumption that most things will just get out of their way. While the cute critters like otters and meerkats make me laugh and lean over the barriers, I also love just sitting on a bench watching the larger animals graze. My favourite animal of all time however is the red panda, which manages to sit in both categories. There is nothing cuter than a red panda, they are perfect teddy bear size and too cute for words. However they're not like other critters like penguins and monkeys dashing about all over the place. They know how pretty they are and expect the world to wait on them. I'll find myself repeatedly returning to their enclosure getting excited by the smallest thing – "Oh my god, he flicked his tail, did you see that!? How adorable! There, look, see? He flicked it again!" To any child, the two high points of any day out are food and shops. Food is less exciting than it used to be, when you were a kid it was so exciting to be presented with options of what to eat instead of just having it delivered on a plate or in a lunchbox. However the shops are actually improved by being a grownup, you don't have to persuade a parental unit that you really do need another stuffed animal, you only have to be able to justify it to yourself. For me, a day at the zoo isn't complete without at least one new fluffy thing to add to the herd back home and as I'm yet to manage to sneak a real red panda out in a rucksack, the stuffed ones will have to do. |