It's a Zoo Out There

Recently I decided that I didn't want to be one of those people that live in a place and have never seen the sites. You know the type. They have lived there for years. You ask them what is good to see in their city or if a specific attraction is worth seeing and you get a blank stare. Not me. I figured you can't judge what you don't know. Since I have been in this state for over a year now, I better get to know it better. I don't want to be accused of not giving it a chance after all. Maybe I just missed the good parts of Georgia.

So to start it all off I decided to go to the zoo. I have always enjoyed the zoo. I have been to the zoos in Washington D.C.; Cincinnati, Ohio; Honolulu, HI; and Santiago, Chile. The zoo in Chile was great, but my all time favorite is the Henry Doyle Zoo in Omaha, NE. As a child we went there often. So how did the Atlanta Zoo compare? Well let's revisit my journey and find out.

The Atlanta Zoo reminds me of a very sad Noah's arc. Whatever animals are in the zoo there are only two of them. They all looked rather sad, lonely and very annoyed with the stupid jack asses on the other side of the cages. However, the zoo animals had an interesting way of dealing with the crowds of jerks banging on the cages, yelling and being generally disrespectful to the zoo creatures. I saw the butt of every animal in the zoo. I can't blame the animals for feeling the urge to moon all the stupid people. All the animals see is dumb asses all day they might as well show the asses their asses.

Sheep butts.

(No the resort sheep didn't come because I didn't want them to be stuck in the zoo.)

I started my painful journey in the rain to the Panda pen, the main attraction. Since I have been in Georgia a little panda cub was born at the zoo. So I wanted to see the little cutie before they sent her packing for China. I was standing at the Panda bear exhibit trying to be polite and take turns, as they asked of us. Unfortunately, I can not say that all the visitors learned how to take turns and respect others. Some families were pushing and shoving and throwing their kids at the glass past the "do not cross" bars. I watched as one mother tried to teach their child why it was wrong to bang on the glass while a grown man stood next to them making stupid faces and pounding on the glass with his kids. Why do parents feel the urge to teach their kids horrible manners? Why don't the zoo keepers use tranquilizer darts on the people that really need to be taken out? I would be a happier person if I could walk over to the fire extinguisher and see next to it a tranquilizer gun in a glass box that reads "in case of jack ass attacks." I would defiantly be breaking some glass. But instead I got my picture and moved on.

Panda Cub

I moved to the less crowed panda exhibits. I was looking at the red panda bear standing right next to the sign that said "Red Panda." A lady and child walked up next to me and stood on the other side of the sign. The lady, bless her soul, started to talk. "O look, it looks just like a little red bear. Just like a little bear. Like a teddy bear. I can't believe how much it looks like a bear. Look that red panda looks just like a bear." Now she went on like this for a while and I started to twitch. I felt the urge to pick up my phone right then and there and call child services. I hope that lady was not home schooling. How slow can one person be? The red panda is not just like a bear, the red panda IS a bear. That is why it is called a red panda bear. And I guess it wouldn't be so bad except that she obviously knew she was looking at a red panda and still didn't understand that it was a bear. It also might not have been so bad if the Atlanta's main zoo attraction wasn't the panda bears. Okay so there is yet another slow person committing their child to a life of stupidity.

I continued on. I looked down on the cement path and noticed the uniformly distributed paw prints leading to the tiger cage. I thought that was cute and I followed them down to see the tigers. As I walked, a woman in her late 20s early 30s started to rant about the paws. She said, "look at the paw prints in the cement. That's really cool. I wonder how long it took them to walk the tiger down this path to make the prints." Now I first thought she must have been talking to a little child and trying to get their imagination up. When I looked over I realized that she was not kidding, she was talking to the 30+ old man she was with. I walked faster hoping not to catch the stupidity.

After the tigers, I saw the apes, monkeys, gorillas, etc. This was rather a large exhibit. Apparently, there are a lot of cognitive and behavior testing on the primates at the zoo. Thus, they had a large number of them. The video by one of the cages showed a gorilla using a computer to recognize other gorillas and was rewarded with food. I thought it was a good thing they didn't do that test on the people standing next to me. I kid you not this is what I witnessed. The people standing next to me were making noises at the animals trying to get a reply. Then there was a noise that came back. The people got excited, and started making more stupid noises and more stupid noises came back. Now I stood there watching this display of stupidity in shear disbelief. You see it was not the animals making the noise (like the stupid people thought) but rather it was other stupid people on the other side of the exhibit also trying to get a noise out of the animals. I swear this actually happened. I can't translate Stupid but I can only hope it was not a matting call.

I walked away quickly. I finally made it to the meerkat cage to end my zoo experience. The zoo actually had a half dozen or so of these animals. Two of them were getting it on. I will spare you the comments of the stupid people when they finally realized what was going on. However, I did become amused by another meerkat sitting in the corner watching his mates mate. It probably was the highlight of my trip. I smiled and left the zoo.

:)