Zootastic

To round out our family weekend in Little Rock, we went to the zoo on Sunday. I’m not a big fan of zoos. I’m not generally a big believer in animal rights or that animals should be treated the same as people. Zoos just seem to be against the natural order of things. Take this chimp for instance. He’s got about a half acre of brambles and general Arkansas underbrush in which to roam and that telephone-pole jungle gym apparatus to swing on. Zoo workers throw a bunch of bananas out for him to eat each day on a concrete slab. Pretty boring compared to a real jungle. He probably sits up there every day staring over the fence wondering what the jungle south of I-630 is like. I’d rather watch a TV show about chimps filmed in the Congo than watch this poor guy sitting atop a recycled power pole.

I thought the best part of the zoo was the walk-in cage holding a bunch of lorikeets. The birds would land on your head and walk along your arms. You just had to watch for the squirts that constantly came from their rear ends. That’s our friend Jim. (The person, not the bird.) I last went to the LR zoo in 1995. Everything was as I remembered it. The place is apparently frozen in time. Except for this lorikeet deal. It was added sometime in the last 13 years.

Apparently, swarming fish is the funniest thing Abby has ever experienced. She threw handfuls of fish food in and then laughed like a crazy person when the fish did their thing.

I almost fell in while leaning over the rail to get this shot.

I’m a big fan of these giant turtles. I’ve seen some good shows about them on Nat Geo. Gina nearly had a stroke when Abby climbed up on that rock.

Abby skipped some of the boring animals to splash in this puddle. Click this pic to see it larger. It’s worth it.

Check my Flickr page for a few more photos.