Fun with fauna

The Fokker’s went to the Zoo again.

Sweet Babou’s company rents the Zoo after hours every summer for the Company Picnic. Sweet Babou’s employer is “old school” in that it gives a rat’s ass about it’s employees, and we are grateful it is not one of those asshat-owned hellholes that treats it’s workers like crap. That’s the reason Sweet Babou has become determined to remain at this company, and make his long term plans from there. The have operations in the UK, so maybe some day we’ll get over there, but for now we are just deeply appreciative of the fact he’s not in some sweatshop like Wal-Mart.

I digress.

The point is that we all had a magnificent time at the Indianapolis Zoo. The carousel, little roller-coaster, and wee train we all free to ride and the girls went nuts. It was Stitch’s first roller-coaster ride and her eyes were shining like stars when she got off. “That”, she assured us, “was awesome”. On the train ride the girls were most impressed with the bunnies that were hopping and hiding in the grasses around the tracks, which they found just as interesting as anything else they saw on the circuit. They speculated that they were the rabbits from Watership Down, which is our current nighttime reading material, and named them accordingly. I got motion sick on the merry-go-round, so Sweet Babou heroically took the three Fokkerlings on it – repeatedly – by himself. Lilo named one of her carousel horses Trusty Rusty, much to her Daddy’s delight; he is always amused by her random neural firings.

The girls also enjoyed seeing the more exotic zoo animals, who were more active in the early evening than they usually are during the day. The big cats, like the cheetahs and lions and tigers, were all prowling around their enclosures near the doors where they would normally go in for the night, clearly befuddled as to why the routine had been changed. The polar bear was actually moving around, rather than sleeping through the heat. The lemurs and gibbons were chasing each other, much to the merriment of my watching daughters. There was a new bird exhibit, and Spock was able to get VERY close to her favorite birds, the flamingos. She says their name as “ma-ming-gohs” and it is life-threateningly cute to hear. Spock also got very close to a bower bird and roared; she was pleased to see that birds are like butterflies in that they fly away startled when roared at. She is a weird toddler.

A new “nursing station” for breastfeeding moms has also been installed, which was lush and earns the Fokker seal of approval. The changing tables were curved upwards, so that babies could not wiggle free or roll suddenly and fall off, which won my approval as well.

A good time was had by all.

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