I've Been Around the World and in the Washington Zoo

Actually it's the Smithsonian National Zoological Park, as mentioned on the banner at the Connecticut Ave. entrance on the warm afternoon of August 16. The prospect of an earthquake and then a hurricane wasn't on anyone's mind, I can assure you.

We didn't spend quite as long as we wanted for various logistical reasons, but we did take a look at a number of large animals and some smaller ones, especially in the Small Mammal House -- naked mole rats, meerkats, golden lion tamarins, lemurs, etc. -- where we lingered because of air conditioning.

We also experienced the full force of the zoo's panda cottage industry. Panda marketing begins with this innocuous bronze.

Since the zoo charges no admission, I'll cut the Smithsonian a little slack regarding its eagerness to sell panda gewgaws and gimcracks. But only so much slack. A panda shack near the entrance to the panda exhibit offered some panda merchandise, such as these panda umbrellas.

Stranger still, the shack also sells a t-shirt with the Hello Kitty character wearing a panda suit. For saccharinity, that's like putting honey on sugar cubes. But the shack was small potatoes compared to the indoor Panda Store across Panda Plaza. Pretty much all your panda needs can be met there.

In case shopping for panda merch makes you hungry, and willing to pay $10 for a hot dog with fries, there's always the Panda Plaza Grill.

Finally, the zoo is home to a couple of actual pandas, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian. Unlike the late Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling, which I believe played ping-pong (well, maybe not) and were given to the United States by the People's Republic of China in the early '70s, the current pandas are only borrowed from China under an agreement that runs until 2015, unless it's renewed.

As leisurely as a panda's life might seem, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian have to breed or risk being returned. "If... either panda is found unsuitable for breeding, the two institutions will discuss the possibility of exchanging them with breeding pandas from China," the zoo's web site says. So the bears need to get it on. Again. They had a cub about five years ago that was sent to China last year to do stud duty for the pandas there, in as much as that's possible,

The National Zoo pandas were visible during our visit in separate indoor spaces. They were doing what I understand pandas do most of the time, eating bamboo. None of our pics turned out even remotely well, so I'm not going publish them and pretend they're Hipstamatic. But the bears looked well. A lot better than the dirty, flea-bitten pandas we saw at the Beijing Zoo.

Brookfield Pics

I took my camera to the zoo last week, but didn't have much luck capturing any decent images of any animals. I didn't even get a good shot of the zoo's relatively inanimate Roosevelt Fountain. The fountain, according to the zoo web site, "honors one of the country’s most enthusiastic conservationists: President Theodore Roosevelt. Alfred Hamill, founding trustee, was the guiding spirit behind the creation of Roosevelt Fountain, which was dedicated on May 14, 1954, in the presence of some 700 dignitaries.

"Prior to the celebration, Sylvia Shaw Judson, noted sculptress and wife of then Chicago Zoological Society president Clay Judson, created four statues that still stand today as symbols of the President’s character: statesman, naturalist, hunter, and soldier."

I need to give those statues a closer look sometime, since I think they're the ones ringing the plaza whose focus is the fountain itself. They aren't statues of the president himself -- I would remember that -- but I can't remember exactly what symbols Judson used.

A riot of gorgeous flowers surrounds the fountain this time of year. Lilly was able to capture it.

I think those are coneflowers. The fountain is barely visible in the background, but who cares. The original image reminds me of a picture for some glossy, photo-heavy calendar.

Lilly also hand her hand at some animal pics, and came away with some good shots. Such as a small tower of giraffes.

And a feeding zebra.

I took at least one pic that I like, if only for sentimental reasons. My family in front of the penguins.

I took that pose because I remembered another photo I took, similar in background, but when my family was a little smaller than it is now.

Yuriko and Lilly and the Brookfield Zoo penguins, circa 1999.

New at the Zoo

Hot days this week, but at least the dogday cicadas have returned to Illinois to buzz during the late afternoon and early evening. I try to time my book reading on our backyard deck to be late enough to avoid the worst of the afternoon heat, but not so late that I'm mosquito food for the dusk-time bloodsuckers. I also sometimes go out after dark and read by porch light and look for fireflies and listen for crickets. They're ramping up now. I expect much louder cricketsong as the weeks go on.

The Brookfield Zoo has added some features since we were last there. It's good to know that the economy hasn't kept a nonprofit like the zoo from capital investments such as the Great Bear Wilderness, 7.5 acres that, according to zoo, feature "iconic North American animals: Grizzly Bears, Polar Bears, Bison, and Eagles." (Sic. Not sure why animals get caps.) The zoo moved the bears there from the former Bear Grottos, which are no more. The new space for bears is much larger than the grottos, the better for bears to be bears, I figure.

The wolves also have a large new enclosure of their own, the Regenstein Wolf Woods. The resident wolves there were fairly active for such a warm afternoon, coming close enough to the viewing station to show their kinship with domestic dogs. A sign at the viewing station -- which is indoors -- promises a couple of minutes in a darkened room, listening to wolf calls. We couldn't pass that up. The room was indeed dark, except for the glowing EXIT sign, and the soundtrack began with crickets. Then the wolves chimed in, making quite a din.

That confirmed that I heard coyotes in the distance those years ago while camping on national forest land in Montana on a cold August night. All four of us were wrapped in our blankets in our tent, but I was the only one awake to hear the not-so-distant baying of coyotes. Later I thought maybe they were wolves, but apparently wolves howl more than coyotes, who yip and yap more (not that I've ever heard that in the suburbs, though I know coyotes live around here).

We also visited exhibits that have been around a while, such as Fragile Desert and Fragile Rain Forest, though I had to wonder about the fragility of environments that would kill me quickly if I ventured there unprepared. Pinniped Point has seals and sea lions, while The Swamp has alligators, otters, snapping turtles and signs warning us not to buy cypress mulch for our gardens, since cypress trees need to stay in swamps, not be cut for purpose of lawn vanity. I'll go along with that, partly for environmental reasons, partly in my quest for a low-maintenance, biodiverse lawn.

The Living Coast has long been a favorite of mine at the Brookfield Zoo. It has penguins, for one thing. It also used to have a large tank of moon jellies. Now there's only a few in a small tank. Or maybe I'm misremembering things. Maybe the Shedd Aquarium has the tank of moon jellies. But I could have sworn that five or ten years ago the Living Coast had an enormous tank with dozens and dozens of the creatures, a real smack of jellies, meandering around their water unconcerned whether they were in Tethys Ocean or an artificial pool built by land-dwelling primates who, in jellyfish terms, are very recent arrivals.

I assume they're unconcerned. It's impossible to tell. I quote from Wiki: "Jellyfish do not have specialized digestive, osmoregulatory, central nervous, respiratory, or circulatory systems." That's a lot of things not to have. They seem so otherworldly, so ethereal. Yet there they are, moving around placidly like they have for maybe 500 million years.

The Brookfield Zoo

The following showed up in a box on my Google News page late last week. I read it and then read it again, to make sure I hadn't missed anything, such as why I would be remotely interested in participating.

Welcome to Google News Badges

Collect private badges for your favorite topics. The more you read, the more your badges level up: you can reach Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and finally Ultimate. Keep your badges to yourself -- or show them off to your friends!

For example, if you keep reading articles about Politics, it will earn you a Bronze badge.

A bronze badge I can show to my friends? Maybe Google thinks I'm ten years old. But if so, why would I want to earn badges in politics? I deleted the box, muttering we don't need no...

We went to the Brookfield Zoo on Friday afternoon, just ahead of the heat wave that's settled over northern Illinois. I wasn't exactly sure the last time we went there, but it's been a few years. Around this time last year we started to go to the zoo, but became mired in a fierce traffic jam on Illinois 83 in DuPage County, and also discovered that our car's air conditioner had decided to break that very day. Things got a mite testy inside the car, so we only got as far as the Oakbook Center, shrugging off the zoo for a mall.

We had better luck this time, arriving in the early afternoon and returning home in time for dinner, thus avoiding overpriced zoo food. Not only that, we had free admission passes that we'd received as a gift a while ago. So for the price of parking ($9), we had access to the Brookfield Zoo, which is formally known as the Chicago Zoological Park but never called that, on 216 acres of Cook County Forest Preserve land in the western suburb of Brookfield.

Why are zoos considered children's attractions? They are, of course, good places to take your children, but a good zoo offers a lot to older visitors. I've been to North American, European and Asian zoos, and you won't persuade me, for instance, that the marvels of Night Safari in Singapore, which is a nocturnal zoo, are best reserved for kids. Even more modest zoos are usually worth a look.

As for the Brookfield Zoo, living relatively close by has made me blasé about it. I shouldn't be. It's one of the country's great zoos, expansive and park-like, full of well-designed exhibits that are home to a wide variety of animals. During our visit, we managed to see (among other animals), addax, African wild dogs, alligator snapping turtles, alligators, Amur leopards and tigers, an Andean condor, Bactrian camels, a bald eagle, bats, black-footed cats, a boa constrictor, buffalo, a cassowary, dolphins, giraffes, golden lion tamarin, a green moray eel, a grizzly bear, Humboldt penguins, ibex, klipspriners, meerkats, Mexican gray wolves, moon jellies, naked mole rats, North American river otters, polar bears, sea lions, sloth bears, wombats and zebras.

The Smokey Bear Tangent

I remember the last time the federal government shut down. I happened to visit Washington DC in December '95, during the event. That was the last time I went to that city, in fact. The shutdown thwarted my desire to visit certain places, such as Mount Vernon and the National Zoo (because who wouldn't want to truthfully say, "I've been around the world, and I've been in the Washington Zoo"?).

I thought it a little odd that the federal government runs the zoo in DC, but then again it was created by Congress in 1889 and is part of the Smithsonian Institution, its full name being the Smithsonian National Zoological Park. It's also where Smokey Bear lived most of his life.

Re Smokey Bear, a blog produced by the Smithsonian, "The Bigger Picture," says that "Smokey was a popular attraction at the National Zoo, and received millions of visitors during his twenty-six year residency. He became so popular in fact that he received more than 13,000 letters a week and was granted his own zip code."

Ankole-Watsui & Turs & Meerkats, Oh My

One of the reasons for living in the Chicago area is because Wisconsin is so close. Last Friday -- a day called "Nonattendance Day" on the school calendar, a thin secular mask for getting Good Friday off -- we drove to Racine, Wisconsin, one of the small cities on Lake Michigan between Chicago and Milwaukee. The last time we were there, Lilly was small and Ann wasn't born yet, so it's been a while.

Our first destination was the Racine Zoo. Last time the zoo charged no admission. At some point in the last eight years, it started to charge admission, which made me grumble for a while, but in the end we got our money's worth. With 76 species on 32 acres, it isn't a huge zoo, but size isn't the thing. Novelty is, and at Racine I saw some animals I don't see often, or ever, such as Ankole-Watsui Cattle, with their enormous horns.

Ankole-Watsui is an ancient African breed, with ancestors among the Hamitic longhorns bred by ancient Egyptians. Lately North Americans have taken to breeding them.

Also living at the Racine Zoo are coati -- South American raccoons, essentially -- ever-active meerkats, West Caucasian turs, Andean bears ("last of the short-faced bears"), Amur tigers and African penguins. It was news to me that any kind of penguin lives on the southwest coast of Africa. Off the west coast of South America, there in the Humboldt Current, certainly, but Africa? About a half-dozen African penguins stood in the shade, reminding me of my ignorance about most things penguin. They are short, stubby penguins, not the kind that are lauded in noble penguin movies.

Inanimate Things at the Zoo

Just inside the entrance of the Cosley Zoo is the gift shop and zoo offices, taking up the left side of this picture, in an early 20th-century train station moved here at some point.

Next to it is a caboose. The world needs more loose cabooses here and there, so I'm always glad to see this one, though it's doubly nonfunctional right now in that it isn't rolling stock anymore, and because it's still closed for the winter.

Near the duck pond is an old-style windmill. It doesn't seem to power anything, but I might be wrong about that. Maybe it provides all of the ducks' electrical needs -- just a hint of the green-energy revolution ahead.

Animals? you ask. Are there any animals at this zoo besides the ducks? Yes indeed, but my photography skills are sore tested by moving animals. The zoo features goats, horses, llama, deer, birds of prey and more, though on Saturday some of them were elsewhere for the winter. The pig and chicken pens, empty of animals, looked like they were being renovated. That or the zoo staff got through the long, hard winter this year however they could.

Cosley Zoo, Illustrated

On Saturday, the Sun warmed the air to over 40° F. and melted more snow. The thing to do was go look at ducks and other waterfowl.

These birds were huddled around one of the ponds at the Cosley Zoo in Wheaton, Ill., which we visit two or three times a year. A few of the more intrepid birds floated on the water and dove in, probably looking for snacks on the bottom, though I'm not sure what they would find this time of year. Some of the others seemed to be nibbling at the snow, maybe as a way to deal with duckish thirst.

This is the entrance sign for the zoo.

Note toward the bottom right, a rock with FUN painted on it. The odd thing about it -- one of a number of odd things, really -- is that the rock is the sole remaining one from what used to be a string of similar-sized rocks on this spot, before parking lot and entrance were renovated about a year ago. As far as small children were concerned, the string of rocks were a lot more fun for climbing and jumping than the lonesome FUN rock.

Also, in enlarging the parking lot, the Cosley Zoo -- that would the Wheaton Park District -- destroyed a fine copse of trees with a short path snaking through them. If the parking lot at its former size was full, as it must have been fairly often on weekends, the thing to do was park on the street a block way, take the sidewalk to the copse, then take the short path on to the zoo's parking lot. A minor, five-minute sort of inconvenience. Can't have that; trees had to die.

But not to grouse too much. The Cosley's still a good little zoo. More about which tomorrow.

Phillips Park and Zoo, Aurora, Illinois

Last Saturday had the distinction of being warm, or at least not cold, so we planned an outdoor expedition. By “planned” I mean “why don’t we go somewhere?” and by “expedition” I mean a short drive involving minimal logistics. But where?

Phillips Park and the Phillips Park Zoo in Aurora, Illinois. Remarkably, we’d never been there before. The last time we were in Aurora, we went without children to see Max Raabe. This time, we went with children to see birds, mammals and reptiles. It’s a small, free zoo, one you can walk through in about 30 minutes, with a collection of mostly North American creatures – river otters, elk, eagles, a mountain lion, peafowl (well, introduced to North America and now wild in Florida), a turkey and others. Some of the reptiles were from far away, though. I’m pretty sure we don’t have any wild pythons on this continent, unless released pets have taken up residence in Florida.

The reptile house also sported some alligators, and in the next tank over, some crocodiles, for an exercise in compare and contrast for those of us who can’t distinguish them by sight. That would include me. But then again I haven’t had that much interface with either species, which is a good thing since I don't aspire to be another Steve Irwin.

The zoo is part of a large, well-wooded park created in 1915. Various improvements to the park have been made over the years, some by the WPA, and in the 1930s workers started turning up mastodon bones in the park. These are on exhibit at the visitors center. Cool, but not that photogenic, at least with my camera. More photogenic is the sculpture outside the visitor, depicting a mastodon rambling across Pleistocene Illinois.

On the other side of the building there’s a sculpture of a WPA worker digging up the bones.

Smoking on a Rubber Cigar

We saw a llama eating a Christmas tree on January 2. On that day we went to the small Cosley Zoo in Wheaton, which I've mentioned before (October 11, 2005 and September 18, 2006). Mainly it was a cheap way to get out of the house, and fortunately it was warm enough for it, though not exactly warm, being in the low 30s and windless.

Cosley has a resident llama, and there in his pen was a discarded pine tree, about Christmas-tree sized. He was calling it lunch, or would have in some dialect of llama-ese. Wouldn't it be good if we, too, could eat our Christmas trees after they've done their decorative duty? Say as a fine Epiphany dinner? This is something that genetic engineering could make a reality.

Word is that Dora the Explorer is going to "save Three Kings Day." I have to wonder how that pans out, but will not spoil things by finding out. Does Swiper steal the gold, frankincense and myrrh? Then do the intrepid Dora and her loyal sidekick Boots lead the Magi on a quest to beat the daylights out of Swiper and recover the gifts for baby Jesus?

I never heard January 6 called "Three Kings" growing up, but Epiphany, and it wasn't much more than a mark on the liturgical calendar; secular calendars rarely bothered with it. It wasn't until I lived in Chicago that heard the day called Three Kings by a few acquaintances of Central European ancestry.

Item from the Past: The Bronx, 1983

August 29, 1983

Last full day in New York. In the early morn I decided to see the Bronx Zoo and the NY Botanical Gardens. Eventually I did so, but it took me a while to get out of 17D [the apartment where I was staying]. On the way, I took the wrong subway, but the detour wasn't without its rewards. At one of the stations, I saw part of the filming of a music video, complete with stereotypical punk costumes, a camera and cameraman, and a woman squatting near a boombox, operating the tunes. Extras were standing around, and a makeup woman with a box of paints powder-puffed the musicians every now and then. I didn't recognize anyone involved, or any of the songs.

Before long I was on the #5 IRT, which after leaving Manhattan becomes an elevated train and gave me a full look at the wasteland that is the south Bronx. Blocks of rundown buildings are one thing, but what's astonishing is how few buildings stand on many blocks, and how much rubble there is. I've never seen the aftermath of a city shelled by an enemy, but I'd think it would look like this place.

Arrived at 180th Street and found the zoo without any trouble. I was expecting a more cage-oriented zoo, but was pleasantly surprised -- it's mostly fields and few cages, with a river running through it too. It also had a fine collection of animals, as zoos should, with only one annoying habit: it seemed like each and every sign describing the animals also waxed tendentious about how MAN as the vile enemy of all that is good and natural (I exaggerate, but only a little). I see what they're getting at, but if you ask the zebra being chased by the lioness, he might cite a more immediate threat.

The Botanic Gardens was less given to lecturing its visitors, with simple name plates to describe its many plants. After a walk through the gardens, I rode back to Manhattan and bought half-price theater tickets at TIKT in Times Square for 'night, Mother at the John Golden Theater on 45th near 8th Ave. (There's also an Army recruiting station at Times Square; a nearby graffito says "Fight War, Not Wars.")

Grizzly, Russian, Black, Asian, Cinnamon

When in a tourist town, do as the tourists do. As I mentioned, Cherokee, NC, was our tourist town of choice on this particular trip, and besides eating at the Little Princess Restaurant ("Indian Owned, Indian Operated" a sign said, and the place served pretty good fried chicken), we wandered around one of the tourist nodes along the Oconaluftee River until we saw this: a bear pit.

Supposedly, there's a bear pit in Pigeon Forge, too. Talk about rare tourist attractions, unless you consider it a minor species of zoo, and even then, how many zoos specialize in bears? PETA would not approve; all the more reason to visit. I asked about the price: $4. Even rarer -- a tourist attraction that hasn't participated much in the entertainment-price inflation of recent years.

You go upstairs to a second-floor complex, and look down on the bears, who are in concrete enclosures on the first floor:

Feeding the bears is encouraged, as the sign says. But only food bought at the bear pit. Lilly and Ann pestered me until I bought a small plate for $1, including apple slices and bread. The bears knew all about the supply of food from above, of course:

Clearly, in the past visitors have had the urge to have the bears wash down their food with handy carbonated beverages. Chief Saunooke says don't do it:

If you held bread or apples in your hand, and moved it with circular motion, this bear would wheel around a time or two as well, expecting a reward for his effort:

I'll give the place credit for pretending it was more than entertainment. It was educational, too! At various places were signs offering a lot of detailed information about bears. No one was reading these, naturally, and even I didn't have much patience for them.

After about 30 minutes, having seen all the bears on exhibit (about a dozen), and not willing to pay another $2 to see cubs in a special room, we headed for the door.

The exit led directly into Chief Saunooke's large souvenir shop. The funny thing was the sign on the other side of the exit, the one that souvenir shoppers might see. It said: DANGER. DO NOT ENTER. That was a complete lie, obviously intended to prevent people from accidentally entering the bear pit observation area without paying.

New Jellies

Out and about on Saturday, a warm late summer day. Included was a visit to the Cosley Zoo, a vest-pocket zoo in Wheaton, Ill., which has the great virtue of being free. It also has picnic tables. We bought fried chicken and a few other items at a drive-through and sat ourselves down for lunch at the Cosley. It was pleasant until a few bees came to join us. The adults among us weren’t too upset, but the children refused to practice a nonchalant attitude, and their agitation disrupted things more than the bees.

The day also included a visit to a Costco that isn’t our usual one, which is always a little disorienting, since no two layouts of that store seem to be quite the same. Just an impression. Haven’t done a study of the warehouses.

One item we picked up was a four-pound plastic jug of Jelly Bellies, the jellybean that Ronald Reagan made famous. The label promises all of 49 favors, which are pictured and named. The pictures are a little fuzzy compared to the actual beans, so it isn’t always clear what you’re getting in to. Or rather, what’s getting into you. We’ve experienced this jug of jellies before, so everyone has favorites and dislikes. I don’t know what it’s officially called, but there’s one I call Cigarette Butt. A vile flavor. Most of them are pretty good, though.

Today was a stay-at-home sort of day, so I spent a while inventing new flavors for Jelly Belly. I mean, they’re just not adventurous enough – blueberry, coconut, grape jelly, lemon lime, licorice, pina colada and root beer (for example) are fine, but what about fugu and belladonna? Or meat flavors like Spam, bacon fat and cheeseburger? Why offer plain ol’ licorice when you can call it Black Sabbath? What about Spud? Durian? Circus peanut? Harvey Wallbanger?

Halloween Wrap

Halloween was dank this year. Chill and drizzle feel right on Allhallow’s Eve, but it does cut down on the trick-or-treaters. About a dozen of various ages came by our house, not nearly as many as last year or the year before. We gave away cheapo lollipops, Blow Pops by brand name, two bags of which we’d bought at Meijer as almost an afterthought a few days ago. Blow Pops. Sounds like slang for something illicit. “After the cops knocked down the door, crime-scene techs uncovered evidence of a crude blow pop lab.”

The day before I’d gutted the pumpkin and cut a face into it. I’m not very imaginative when it comes to jack-o-lantern design, so it had triangle eyes and nose, and a ragged-tooth mouth. My most imaginative jack-o-lantern concept was in October 2001, when I came up with Osama bin Pumpkin as an entry in my office building’s pumpkin-carving contest, but no one in my office, me included, actually created such a thing.

But I did add a distinctive element to jack this year, unintentionally. I needed a candle to light his inside, so I took a scented one from the lower bathroom, vanilla I think. Four or five people commented on the “marshmallow” smell. It did smell pretty good. Maybe that’s what you get when you mix vanilla and pumpkin. I’ve discovered a new use for scented candles.

Ann had thrown up a couple of times during the day but otherwise didn’t seem ill (and she’s OK now). Still, we decided she wasn’t fit for trolling the block for candy. Just as important, she was too young to protest the decision or feel any disappointment.

So Lilly and I walked around in the light drizzle. For her it was merely the last phase of the holiday. Immediately after school, she’d gone trick-or-treating with her friend Rachel, another second-grader who lives about a half-mile away. Last Friday, Lilly’s school held a Halloween “dance” and I took her and her sister. Lilly wore her blue fairy outfit, Ann a “Cinderella” dress. That’s what we called it, anyway.

On Saturday, the girls didn’t dress up, but we accidentally participated in the Lincoln Park Zoo’s Halloween festivities (see Sunday). We didn’t know it beforehand, but it turned out that the zoo was giving away candy and other items to kids that afternoon -- to long lines of kids, many in costume, waiting for candy, so I guess they’d heard about it.

In fact, there were so many kids there to collect candy that the zoo was a zoo. In some places, the animal exhibits were closed, maybe because the zookeepers didn’t want the animals scared by the commotion. We waited in a few of these lines, equipped with paper bags supplied by zoo staff, and at the end of the lines other staffers gave away candy: second-rate varieties like Swedish Fish that had obviously been donated.

More zoo personnel -- or maybe Halloween temps -- wandered around in full-body costumes, including such characters as Minnie Mouse and Big Bird, which seemed to astonish Ann. Look what just stepped out of the TV!

Each of them walked around with another person as a kind of guide, since peripheral vision might have been limited by the getups. One came along dressed as the PBS cartoon character Arthur, with a female companion dressed something like a nurse. “Arthur and his physical therapist,” I said to Lilly as they passed by. The “physical therapist” heard it and laughed.

Poetry in the Zoo

After an early afternoon lunch with my editor last Wednesday, I had a few hours to kick around, combined with the ambition to walkabout in Manhattan. What I didn’t have was energy. I’d gotten up very early to catch my flight, without the luxury of going to bed early the night before.

So from West 56th Street between 5th and 6th avenues, I made it as far as the Midtown-facing side of Central Park. At least the weather was good. In fact, it was flawlessly dry and warm. Somehow, in the dozen times I’ve visited New York, I’ve almost always had good walking weather, even in August or November. Then again, I’ve never been in January or February.

Last week the park was still very green, with just a dash of fall. Just inside the park, next to Central Park South, is an imaginatively named body of water, the Pond, which has a bright green surface these days. Pond scum, I thought. Not pond scum, all passersby are told by signs, but eco-friendly duckweed. Probably the Central Park Conservancy, which manages the park on behalf of the city, got tired of people complaining about the pond scum.

Near the Pond is the Central Park Zoo. It was just the thing: not far away, not too large, and new to me. I like zoos anyway, sometimes even better when there are no children to shepherd around. The Central Park Zoo is exceeding handsome, completely rebuilt according to a Kevin Roche design in the 1980s, with a lot of brickwork and plantings. It’s divided as the Earth is, into temperate, arctic, and tropical zones—the latter two formed (mostly) by indoor exhibits, while the temperate exhibits were outdoors, taking advantage of New York’s temperate location.

Wandering around, I saw penguins, puffins and polar bears in the arctic chambers; otters, red panda, marsh turtles and snow monkeys in the temperate zone; and a selection of colorful birds, including the remarkable white-fronted amazon in the tropics. Believe me, those Google images do it no justice.

Before long, I started to notice the poetry posted near the animal habitats. Besides the usual zoological information provided on signs, the zoo has also erected permanent signs offering verse to visitors. Generally, the lines had something to do with animals, though sometimes only tangentially.

Famous poets were represented: Sappho, Auden, Frank O’Hara, among others. There was a cross-section of poems translated from other languages as well: Spanish, an Inuit tongue, haiku by Issa, and more. Reading about these signs when I got home, I discovered that they were installed only this year. I’ve never seen anything like them at a zoo.

In the temperate zone, I spotted a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye called “Famous”—white letters on green Plexiglas, very aesthetically done. By golly, seeing that did me good. She’s a San Antonio poet who visited my high school English class one day in 1978 to read some poems. I think, but do not remember for certain, that she actually attended my high school before my time there (she would have been a new college grad in ’78). I didn’t write “Famous” down, but I did read it all, with considerable enjoyment.

I fed “river fish famous Nye” into Google this evening, and sure enough there it was:

Famous

By Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and is not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

One Small Zoo

Before I go anywhere, I consult a map. Even though I know the route to St. Louis and back cold, and I even remember the streets of St. Louis well enough to get from downtown to Washington University, I looked at a few maps before I went. I was rewarded with the discovery of the Henson Robinson Zoo.

Springfield, Illinois, is well known for its many Lincoln sites, including his house and grave and now a spanking-new interactive edutainment museum. Lincoln’s name is on every other brick in Springfield, it seems. But I needed something to break up the trip with a toddler, and Lincoln wasn’t the thing. On the map I saw a red point-of-interest dot, the zoo, not too far off I-55, and decided that if we were going to stop in Springfield, it would be there.

The Henson Robinson Zoo, a unit of the Springfield Park District, isn’t large. It isn’t famous. In the zoo world, it must be the equivalent of a community college. But I didn’t want an all-day zoo experience; I needed something worth about two hours’ of my time; and I found it. Since it was small, it wasn’t tiring, and it had a lot of shade, so I was able to keep Ann from getting too much sun. It was a Thursday afternoon, so it wasn’t crowded. Admission: $3.25 for me, nothing for Ann. That’s about right. Megazoos, the San Diego Zoo and their ilk, tend to gouge their visitors. Hey! This is the world-famous San Diego Zoo, as seen on TV! Cough it up.

Ann actually paid some attention to the animals. I wasn’t sure she would, but she did. A small zoo has small animals, mostly, and we saw spider monkeys, wallabies, lemurs, foxes, various birds, assorted cats, a couple of small bears, prairie dogs, otters, alligators and some other creatures -- nothing too big, no elephants or herds of zebra or fat sea lions in huge tanks. Their absence didn’t bother me or Ann.

There were at least a dozen peacocks wandering around the zoo grounds, not confined anywhere, sometimes with plumage fully open, sometimes not. I even saw one way up in a tree, and heard several being noisy. Ann had her most fun feeding ducks and geese in one of the ponds. Palmfuls of pellets were available from a machine for a quarter, and I spent two quarters that way.

Item from the past: March 4, 1992

Preface, 2005: Here it is, the middle of March, and it’s still cold every day. Last Sunday was an anomaly. Today it was cold enough to maintain the patches of snow still on the ground from last week’s light dustings. I see that a few bulbs are beginning to push out of the ground, but that’s the only clue that something warm might happen in the near future.

I used to complain about the same sort of thing in Osaka, which has a much warmer climate than here. Spring can’t come soon enough anywhere. Then again, I didn’t have central heating when I lived there, just a gas space heater I rescued from the street. Note this item from early March 1992:

We’re about halfway out of winter now. The nights are still mostly cold, sometimes with icy winds, but things are fairly mild during the day, sometimes reaching the 60s I think. Not much rain recently, but that picks up as it gets warmer. At the end of this month, the cherry blossoms will emerge, which of course is a big deal.

Too big a deal, in some places. The grounds of the national mint feature nice cherry trees, but teeming crowds as well, even on a weekday during cherry blossom season. Last year I went to Suminoe Shrine instead, 20 minutes south of where I live by bicycle. The shrine precincts include a cemetery devoted to war dead, and cherry trees grow among the stones and along the path to the main shrine. The wind separates countless petals and delivers them like snow onto the stones below. Maybe people are put off by the fact that it’s a cemetery, or maybe the place is simply obscure, but I was by myself that warm afternoon at Suminoe.

I went to the Oji Zoo last Sunday. It’s set between some train lines and the side of a mountain range in the outskirts of Kobe. Within that tight space, the zoo seems small, but when you walk through it, you realize it isn’t that small—paths between the exhibits switch back on themselves and a lot is packed into the available land. Still, except for the largest animals, most of its residents live in cages.

The zoo had an enormous collection of birds, another way to save space I guess, including a number of Asian species I’d never heard of, and a lot of colorful South American varieties. Elsewhere, there were a couple of koalas, and—I couldn’t believe it—I saw one of them jump from one tree to another, the most active I’ve ever seen those animals. At the gorilla cage, a surly-looking simian decided to pitch a handful of dung out at us, but his aim was poor, luckily.

It reminded me of the Alpine Zoo in Innsbruck, Austria, in size and mountainside setting, though that zoo was much more built into the actual side of a mountain, with tiers of exhibits connected by more vertical footpaths. Oji also reminded me, in its many cages, of the dusty animal prison of a zoo I visited in Pusan, South Korea, though it wasn’t quite as bad as that.