zoo day

We spent a day doing fun educational things. For instance, we started out at the Museum of Natural History. We saw many things, but most interesting were the dinosaurs. I won't go into a detailed description of the museum, but I will mention that there were 10,000 little kids, and they were literally running around the skeletons screaming. One kid was actually sitting on a display (you know the ones I mean, with the big "do not touch" signs all over the place) while her parents took a picture. We commented loudly about how that wasn't allowed, but they were too involved in their own stupidity to notice us.

The time arrived when we needed to leave. Not only because the crazy children were about to get fed to dinosaurs, but because we had to get to the zoo. Penguins are a very important part of the day. We made our way across the park, which was convenient, and entered the tiny Central Park Zoo. First things first: make straight for the penguins.

As always, the penguins were the cutest things ever. I love them so much that maybe someday I'll get a penguin tattoo. I'll say it: I heart penguins. about half of the large group of penguins were standing guard on the rocks. Two of them were facing the wrong direction, and I think they may have been confused about what all the other penguins were looking at. The other half of the group were swimming. By "swimming" I mean of course that they were shooting through the water torpedo-style, and making dolphin-like jumps over & back into the water. No penguins were swimming sideways waving at us like last time I went there (I have a video of that somewhere), but I still could have watched them forever. But it was time to move on.

The next stop was the polar bear cave. Last time I was there, a polar bear threatened to eat everyone, and another one lay on a rock scratching his tummy for about half an hour. We have video of that too. This time, however, there were no polar bears to be seen. The rumor going around was that they were inside the building getting fed or groomed or trained or something. Whatever the case, we saw no polar bears that day.

Next on to the rainforest exhibit. It's a small enclosure full of pretty plants and birds and humidity. Inside an enclosure within the exhibit, there are several glass cases containing snakes, lizards, and bats (all separated of course). We like the bats because their case is very dark, but you can still see them flying around like lunatics. Normally I would say they flew around like monkeys, but I have to take this phrase out of my speech for reasons that will be explained soon. As we stared slack-jawed at the bats, some lady commented "I really doubt that those are real bats." Liz & I turned our slack-jawed stares to this lady. She's right you know - the zoo broke with the tradition of showcasing live animals in order to substitute only the bats with erratic robots. We left the bats at that point because we couldn't handle the harsh reality of the idiots surrounding them.

On to the snow monkeys. On the way there, we passed multiple cages of tamarins, which are little tiny monkeys with big fuzzy heads and long tails. One of the tamarins had given birth to a baby monkey (as opposed to what, I don't know) only last month. We saw this baby monkey. It looked like a baby alien skeleton, pure white and adorable in that hideous way that only baby monkeys can be.
Now really on to the snow monkeys. They were all sprawled out on the rocks enjoying the sun. As we looked, one of them rolled over and, shall we say, began to give himself some monkey love. This went on for a bit, and then he stopped and fell asleep on his face. Now you understand why the term "like a monkey" has a new meaning for me. For a while at least, I will have to remove this from the vernacular.

After we saw everything to see at the tiny zoo, we had lunch at Teany. This is a yummy vegan tea cafe owned by Moby. We were thoroughly enjoying our food until the table next to us became occupied. There were three people, and the conversation was dominated by one girl. It became the most annoying, egocentric, superficial, and inane thing I've ever heard. Liz & I used telepathy to agree on what kinds of horrible punishments should befall these people for ruining our lunch. Finally they were gone. And good riddance.

We did more things that day, but these were the most interesting. I'm sure I will mention other things in future blogs, but I still have at a few specific blogs to write before I get to mention things in passing. I might even get to them today if Craig didn't need the computer for "studying for finals."