![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Oct. 7th, 2007
(Pulls string) The Polar Bear goes...
Oct. 7th, 2007 07:04 pmAt 12:15 this afternoon, I got a text message from my wife asking if I could take our daughter to midtown to go see a show. The little cwab had previously told me that she was going to see Rumors at Christian Brothers, but hadn't bothered to mention that she needed transportation, as I assumed that the person she was mostly likely going with would have the common decency to pick her up, which was wrong, as usual.
Midtown's normally a good twenty minute drive, and I hated to waste a trip, so I stopped in for a catfish po'boy at Soul Fish, and then decided to go to the zoo. For all of the lousy crap in Memphis, the zoo is really a great facility, with everything a tasmanian devil could possibly eat. They recently opened a new habitat for their sea lions, polar bears, brown bears, and birds of prey, called Northwest Passage, and having a climate controlled environment for the polar bear and something more impressive than a swimming pool for the sea lions is pretty nice, if you ignore the whole "raised in captivity" thing.
While passing by the zebra enclosure I came across a pair of pink gingham-esque training pants, sitting by themselves on a bench. A worker snatched them up before I could take a picture, but I thought it told a story that could be either amusing or profoundly disturbing, depending on the sort of imagination you have.
I hit the new Northwest Passage exhibit right about showtime for the sea lions, and I thought it was a very well-done presentation, using the standard sea lion "tricks" to educate the audience about the physiology of sea lions, habitats, predators, etc. (better than the show prior to the opening of the exhibit, which was mainly "here's the fish, get the ball"). After the show, I went down to the polar bear enclosure, which has a swimming/viewing area. The polar bear swam up to me and mooed, which was not a noise I expected to hear from a polar bear. Then eagles, brown bears, a long walk to see the pandas sleep, off to the aquarium (for the air conditioning mostly), the cats (the jaguars were especially liquid), and then out.
Midtown's normally a good twenty minute drive, and I hated to waste a trip, so I stopped in for a catfish po'boy at Soul Fish, and then decided to go to the zoo. For all of the lousy crap in Memphis, the zoo is really a great facility, with everything a tasmanian devil could possibly eat. They recently opened a new habitat for their sea lions, polar bears, brown bears, and birds of prey, called Northwest Passage, and having a climate controlled environment for the polar bear and something more impressive than a swimming pool for the sea lions is pretty nice, if you ignore the whole "raised in captivity" thing.
While passing by the zebra enclosure I came across a pair of pink gingham-esque training pants, sitting by themselves on a bench. A worker snatched them up before I could take a picture, but I thought it told a story that could be either amusing or profoundly disturbing, depending on the sort of imagination you have.
I hit the new Northwest Passage exhibit right about showtime for the sea lions, and I thought it was a very well-done presentation, using the standard sea lion "tricks" to educate the audience about the physiology of sea lions, habitats, predators, etc. (better than the show prior to the opening of the exhibit, which was mainly "here's the fish, get the ball"). After the show, I went down to the polar bear enclosure, which has a swimming/viewing area. The polar bear swam up to me and mooed, which was not a noise I expected to hear from a polar bear. Then eagles, brown bears, a long walk to see the pandas sleep, off to the aquarium (for the air conditioning mostly), the cats (the jaguars were especially liquid), and then out.