My Kids Belong In the Zoo

We went to the zoo yesterday. We left early, got there just an hour after opening, and spent about 3 hours visiting Africa and 1 hour seeing North American critters. The zoo just isn’t very. . . well, seeing the animals on TV is much more exciting, to me.

At the zoo, the animals just stand around, or lay around, or sometimes don’t even show up. That’s kind of disappointing, especially after you’ve worked your way to the front of the viewing area past all the other visitors.

My boys love seeing the animals, and get very excited. “Daddy! Look at the turtle!” And that makes me happy. For them.

For myself, I’m hot, tired, and rather unimpressed. I’d love to see the animals doing their animal-action things — the elephants and rhinos charging, the giraffes eating leaves off the tall trees, the grizzly bears growling. But at the zoo, you only see all the stuff that ends up on the cutting room floor of Animal Planet. It’s the boring 23 hours, 59 minutes of the animals’ lives.

Heck. One of my favorite animals, the red wolf, we couldn’t even see in its habitat. It was sleeping out of sight. Sigh. I want to see a pack of wolves stalking a deer or something.

Lazy bugger animals. Entertain me! I’d rather see the animals in a circus. “Natural habitat,” be darned.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com