Ordinarily, after spending many days inside your home with few trips out, a day spent outside is a breath of fresh air. That is unless you go to the zoo where the aroma of animal poop reigns king.
I went to the St. Louis Zoo with one thing in mind – see every single animal that the standard free admission would allow. I wanted to spend as much time out of my house as possible.
The day was filled with things that struck me as odd.
To start my oddities, it seemed that many of the animals were asleep or groggy. Everything from crocodilian creatures to pathetic pumas.
One thing that was more bizarre was the high level of hippo activity. There were at least four hippos in the tank. One of them kept swimming laps. This may not be unusual but their tank is so dirty, you can’t really see anything unless they are just about right up against the glass. This hippo happened to literally be right up against the glass.
I overheard a zoo worker say how the hippos had been extraordinarily vocal that day. They were getting a little physical with each other. Apparently hippos fight from time to time. Some of the lines on the side of the hippo pictured above are scratches and not light reflections.
I would think that if hippos were fighting, arguing or even having a somewhat heated discussion over a cup of tea right up against the glass, you would watch. Instead, many of the good tourists blocked the spectacle for everyone else by having their picture taken with the violent backdrop.
I hope their mothers flash reflected off the glass so when they go back to look at this picture a year from now, they will have no idea what was behind them that was so important that they needed to block it off from the rest of the world in an attempt to capture the memory for themselves.
On the way out of the zoo, I looked up to the trees only to find a man tending to an animal…with a paint brush.
Ok. So it is a fake animal. It is there to represent prey that a big cat would drag up a tree. I saw it on Jack Hannah once. I guess it was time for a detailing.