Our three year wedding anniversary. We spent the afternoon at the Jardín Zoológico, the majority of the time spent feeling bad for the poor upkeep of the large mammal exhibits. At the turn of the century, the zoo grounds were palatial in building design. These structures remain, but their age hasn’t been hidden. In the pens, the animals looked bored stiff and hot. The saddest was the polar bear, which had a small pool not big enough to swim even a lap in. The zoo had a fun petting zoo and the smaller ungulates looked quite happy to eat the pellets you could buy to feed them.
The feeding did persist to other types of animals all over the zoo and sparks a debate. On one side, the provided food is controlled for quality and content suggesting it is probably better than the potato chips that would otherwise be thrown at the animals. On the other hand, people just keep buying and feeding more and more food unabated. For the larger animals, this likely isn’t a problem but the food, sold in giant buckets, is fed to everything from otters to birds. I have a hard time believing that their diets are adequately controlled by this. It’s all just shades of gray anyway. We kill and eat animal everyday without concern so, considering the alternative, zoo’s are pretty good places.
This goat floored me. He just kept standing on top of the log.
Dear, I need to buy some skin cream at the mall....you need anything?
The zoo had a dragon theme as an exhibit. I think it refered to mythical animals in contrast to the real animals at the zoo. The interesting thing was that they contrasted the incarnations of dragons throughout all different societies. It was really neat seeing the ways dragons were portrayed around the world.
Oops! a little too close! It didn't hurt, don't worry.
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