Valentine's Day 2005.

First of all, it was my idea to go today because and we heard the monkeys hooting the other day this weekend and I wanted to go then, but it was rainy and I was totally immersed in Econ studying. Secondly, today was absolutely beautiful and we just had to go! Thirdly, it's Valentine's Day: and this was his present to me (and we all remember what my present to him was.)

So we get there and go straight to Cat Country. There's the boy lion (roaring sort of feebly--HRrraw) with his excellent "haircut" (I mean, it just grows all trimmed like that, I think) and the girl lion is just lyin' (haha!) there, being boring. We see a tiger, a puma (which was meowing like a little kitty), snow leopards, regular leopards, a big ole' cheetah, a big black panther, a little ocelot and a little lynx. I was kind of disappointed upon seeing the lynx because it was so small and looked not tough at all, kind of like our own mascot (ooh stick, you unicycle riding freak!). At the end of Cat Country were the meerkats, which aren't cats at all, but more like mongooses. They're adorable little things; they were all fussing about and standing on their hind legs with their big eyes beaming. They were kinda mangy looking little tykes though, so we left pretty quickly. (I got some cute pictures, but as you know, I deleted them ALL. ALL OF THEM. PAIN=ME.)

After that, we saw about 30 seconds of the sea lions' show, which made me kind of sad because at the end of the show, the sea lions were kind of waving half-heartedly and the audience didn't even clap very much. Then we approached the penguin tank (located outside, so it must've been hideously warm for those poor ARCTIC CREATURES), where some redneck country boy was shouting "Hyuck hyuck!!! Thay-at penguin just pooped! HEY, look! That other one's uh-aytin' it!" Needless to say, Drew and I exchanged glances and departed quickly..

Toward the "Once Upon a Farm" section! I thought this was a particularly sad and pathetic part of the zoo. The way they describe it on that link is misleading--it doesn't "feature crops such as corn, cotton, and soybeans grown right on the farm" (nary a cornstalk was to be seen); it doesn't include "natural phenomena such as fruit and nut trees, vegetable gardens, ponds and streams" (the only streams were that of steaming urine spurting from various animals); there wasn't even "an old-fashioned train for a scenic ride around the exhibition." No horses, either. What there was: about five goats total, two cows aching for some affection from children (which they received, mooingly), a dozen chickens (temperamental creatures), two sad and dirty donkeys, and a couple big fat "minipigs". I swear, that was their name.. Drew and I wanted to see some big ones that would dwarf the ones we saw so that we could actually consider them "minipigs" but there were none.

(An animal that did dwarf its kindred was the capybara, the largest rodent in existence today. It looks like a 2-foot-tall guinea pig, which is enough to freak me out and give me nightmares for the rest of my life. Stranger still, it was located in Cat Country, even though it is a decidedly uncat creature.)

We looked at the Round Barn in passing, partly because there are only smelly antelopes and crap (literally!) there, and partly because we were on our way to the AQUARIUM! The reason AQUARIUM is in all caps is because Drew and I both expected it to the be pinnacle of our lives (at least in levels of awesomeness reached), but it turned out more like this: aquarium. It was a dark, odorous room containing small tanks crammed with fish of all sizes. Redneck Penguin Kid and his group joined us and RPK began shouting, "WOAH! These here catfish weigh 34 pounds--have you ever seen a catfish this big, Pa?" or something to that extent. Drew and I gritted our teeth (separately, not one against another's) and tried to savor the disgust only a moray eel can summon, but this proved too difficult with the backwoods-accent-tainted shouting of RPK & Co.

On the way to the reptile house, we waited to hear a trumpeter swan honk, since the sign advertised that their honk was the cause of their namesake. Apparently all the swans in this zoo were mute or had lost their voices, because later, when I "terrorized" one (loomed "menacingly" over it while it sat on its nest), it opened its mouth but only raspy breaths came out. Drew got a pretty good picture of that, which makes it an even FURTHER SHAME THAT I DELETED THEM ALL. WOE IS ME. Anyway, I was going to put up the picture of me horrifying that goose with the caption, "I am too cruel to be a vegetarian, no?" The correct answer to that is is yes.

The herpetarium, as reluctant as I am to admit it, was actually the coolest part of the zoo, I think, except for maybe a few exciting moments later. It had the most going on--I must have sat and watched a snake practically tying itself in knots, trying to rub off the skin it was shedding. It was awesome. There were really evil looking animals like the Malaysian leaf frog, among the mostly fat frogs and tubby toads. We identified among the species there the rosy boa, to which Drew's snake Yum-Yum belongs. We read the information on the floor next to the inlaid tile that showed the length of the longest snake measured in the world (it was like 36.5 feet!!!) We saw the reticulated boa constrictor and decided that "reticulated" means "really freakin' big." We were having a really good time.. and then.. a child enters. And begins shouting. "THAT SEA TURTLE IS SO BIG, MAMA!" but since he's reallllly Southern it comes out as, "THAY-AT SAY TURTEL IS SEW BEE-UGH MAW-MAW!"

Drew and I flee into the Dragonhouse, where the first Komodo dragon startles me because it's staring right at me and looking hungry as we enter, and Drew laughs at my terror. We take a picture of us smooching in front of the aforementioned horrendous beast's enclosure, and even though it turns out lopsided, I was going to post it. Until I deleted it. Darn.

We have a rough spot of luck and the hippos are inside for the winter, the macaws are nowhere to be found, and the pandas (Ya-Ya and Ling-Ling, I think) are sleeping. We had to pay three extra dollars each to see these lethargic varmints, so I didn't think it was really worth it, except that we got to see a bronzed quote of Drew's former Chinese teacher (Dr. Ming Dong Gu) in the garden which talked about people who assisted in the effort of the zoo to acquire these animals. So that was interesting.

After the pandas, we visited Primate Canyon, where we saw orangutans, one silverback gorilla (but just a moment because there were window-hogs in front of us blocking the view, those jerks), and bonobos. Bonobos are weird animals. I think Kelly is writing a paper about them, so she knows what I am talking about. But these bonobos were just kinda nasty, especially with all the peeing that went on there. Hrmph.

Another rough patch of luck: elephants, tapirs, and rhinoceri were inside, so we had to move right along toward those smelly zebra and more antelopes. Yawn. On the other side of them were more antelope (I mean, really, zoo people. Let's invest the money in some other way--antelope are cool but NOT THAT COOL. Let's build an elephant or hippo house that people can go in to look at the animals, when they're inside during the winter--like St. Louis has!) and a few ostriches. My pausing to watch yet another animal (in this case, a zebra) urinate caused us to miss an ostrich sitting down and laying an egg, but we noticed the wet-looking sphere and soon enough, a Southern family shouted to us, "We just saw that there ostrich sit down and lay an egg!!" We were like, "Whoa," because that's impressive even if you say it all Southern-like. It was about 3/4 the size of a basketball. The egg's mom wandered away and the egg's dad (I assume) kept pecking at it or the dirt around it.

I got bored with watching the egg, so we looked at the giraffes. The boy giraffe was eyeing one of the girl giraffes somewhat amorously and followed her inside their giraffe house, so Drew and I moved it right along.

The Spider House (funded by Terminex) was closed, as was the "Animals of the Night" exhibit (bats, moles, etc.) Quite disappointing. We saw a couple of flamingos on our way back to the lion cage to see if he'd roar once more, but he didn't and we left. All in all, it was lots of fun, even if the Memphis Zoo is kind of ghetto. We'll be returning soon, and I'll take lots of pictures then to make up for my dumbness this time.

Summary: WOOT!