Along with several packs of small schoolchildren and a surprisingly robust collection of Orthodox Jewish families, we went to the Bronx Zoo on Monday. Like all six-month babies who don't understand what hands are, let alone animals, James was desperate to go to the zoo. Considering his
sterling history of going places, we were eager to oblige.
It costs $13 to park at the zoo. That made me an angry pink baby. James was actually pretty good, by which I mean asleep, when we arrived.
The first animals we saw were giraffes. James spends many hours a day salivating on a rubber giraffe that is indistinguishable from a dog toy, so we figured he'd be excited by the real thing. He was not. Nevertheless, I took him out of his stroller, so his mother could take thousands of photographs of him in front of the giraffes.
With the giraffes
Next we saw okapi. If a zebra mated with a not particularly potent horse, their spawn might look like an okapi. We saw elephants, which had the tired look that elephants that don't live in Africa or India or whatever have, and we saw a bunch of animals that looked like monkeys, though they all had crazy non-monkey names. James cared about none of these animals, and my wife photographed all of them.
With the Langurs
James would occasionally smile or get excited, but this never had anything to do with animals. Mostly, this had to do with Latin women, whom James enjoyed flirting with a great deal.
My favorite animals were the gorillas. You could get very close to them, and they would do wise and noble things, such as stare at grass and then eat it. I also enjoyed the polar bear that slept the entire time. Out of solidarity, or because he's a baby, James slept in front of the polar bear. The regular brown bear seemed nervous. It kept pacing around the rock like it had placed a bet it already regretted.
Napping with the polar bear
There's a monorail at the zoo! I didn't see that coming. It takes you on a totally random tour, featuring buffalo (or animals that look like buffalo), red pandas, and an extremely scary tiger. James loved the monorail because we let him eat a map the entire time. Probably, this was his favorite part of the zoo.
Eating zoo map on the monorail
Ericka's favorite part was the photo booth, as she'd left her camera at home, and this gave her an opportunity to commemorate the day. What's that? She brought her camera and took over 200 photos? Ericka's favorite part was the photo booth because she has a deep and incurable addiction. Thanks for the tickets,
Teresa!
