gilian's gardens: at the zoo

A week ago, Jack and I went to the zoo with Jessie, Cory, the drummer and all of the girlies. It was a lovely fall day, perfect for walking around outside with the girls and some of our kids. Cory has been working on some kind of project--maybe some software or a game or something that can be played or used on an ipod or iphone? For his project, he needed pictures of animals, so he and Jessie planned an outing to the zoo and invited us and we invited Audrey and the drummer.

All in all, it was a lovely outing, the girls seemed to have a good time and we all worked on our animal names and sounds and impressed our fellow zoo-goers. In fact, if you don't count the extra hour or so that Jack and I spent wandering around the parking lot looking for Cory's car (why his car and not our own? too long and complicated for this post) instead of Jessie's car, (yeh, we were looking for a gold hundai instead of a red chevy and Jessie, please, please, please do not apologize for that any more, seriously, it's okay, we found my wallet and we needed the exercise), it was time very well spent.

I must admit that I miss the zoo visits of my youth when my mom brought marshmallows to feed the bears. Yeh, I know, no feeding the animals nowadays, but back then, it was, what the hell, ignore those silly zoo signs because my mom had trained the polar bears and black bears to do all kinds of tricks for treats. Never known as shy or retiring, my mother would open up her bag of marshmallows (specially purchased for zoo animals) and would begin their act (and by their act, I mean mom's and the bears' act). She began with YOOHOO, YOOHOO, WOOWOOHOO--in her loudest zoo voice--until the bears woke up and looked her way (no one can ignore her YOOOOHOOO--you just try to ignore it, I'm telling you, you will fail). Next, she would pull out the marshmallows and wave them at the bears. The bears couldn't help themselves. They would slowly rise and lumber to the edge of their moat, because seriously, who can resist the pull of marshmallows and my mom saying, 'c'mon now, get over here, you can do it'? Then she would use the special signals that she and the bears had developed over the years to get them to sit down, sit up, wave, and stand up. She could even get them to jump into their water by tossing marshmallows into the pool. Her zoo voice echoed through that whole end of the zoo until I wondered if the deer and zebras and penguins were also obeying her command, because I know I was--sit down. Absolutely. Sit up, okay. Wave--as hard as I can. But did I ever get a marshmallow? Nosireebub. I tell you, as a child, I was amazed that not only did my mother have the human world in her control, but she also had the wild animal world in the palm of her hand (at least when it was in a bag of marshmallows and accompanied by her zoo trainer voice).

Where was I? Oh yes--our trip last Saturday. These are photos by Jack. While the animals appeared healthy and happy, as documented in Cory's 220 pics, this is the way I will remember our zoo trip, 2008.

On the carousel