Pages

Thursday, April 25, 2013

The zoo

I went to the Oregon Zoo today. For some reason I got to thinking about my earliest experiences with the place...
  • The first word I could spell was Z-O-O. Zoo. This was before I could even spell my name.
  •  I had delayed language development due to a head injury when I was a baby. My first full sentence (supposedly when I was four years old) was a request for the family to go to the zoo. And yes, mom immediately took us there. Anything, anything, to get me talking.
  • There are some really tall structures on the ridge overlooking the zoo, and they have red lights to warn air planes about them at night. I called these the "zoo lights" and thought they indicated whether the zoo was open or not.
  • When watching the weather channel, I learned how to tell if the elephants were being rained on. That's right, I didn't talk about the weather in terms of how it effected me, I talked about the elephants.
I guess you could say that the zoo was pretty important to me from a young age.

Speaking of elephants, here's a photo I got of the newest edition to the elephant herd. Her name is Lily, and I've written about her twice before.

Lily

4 comments:

Debra She Who Seeks said...

Our Edmonton Zoo sells compost every Spring made from the zoo animals' poop -- they call it ZOO MANOO!

Madam Lost said...

The Zoo Lights -- Interesting, I think you figured this out on your own since the lights we usually only on when the Zoo was closed and red is associated with stop. Red lights on means stop - don't go to the zoo.

The radar to see if the elephants were getting wet was your first lesson in map reading and awareness that weather here isn't necessaryily weather there -- even if here and there aren't that far apart.

Dancing With Fey said...

Debra -- I don't know if my local zoo does that. But I know that they have, in the past, sold journals made from elephant dung.

Mom -- No idea how I came up with the zoo lights idea. Those structures aren't even part of the zoo, though they're on the ridge nearby.

Dancing With Fey said...

Wait, I didn't clarify in the post...I thought that when the lights were on, the zoo was open. Which makes no sense at all, since they're the lights are on all night long. Maybe I thought the zoo was just open 24/7.