Calgary Zoo - August 2, 2004

On the Monday civic holiday, Angela and I went to the zoo. The real zoo, not our places of work. We made it into the parking lot around 11:00 am, where tons of other people were parking as well. The day was cloudy, and forecast was 40% chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon, so it was all up in the air whether we would end up in the zoo or not today. Those reading this have to appreciate that members of the female persuasion are likely to change their minds whenever they feel like it.

The last time I was in the Calgary zoo was in winter 1995. The reason I remember that is back then, then had a polar bear exhibit. There was a small pool, smaller than my cubicle at work, and the polar bear was wandering around it in circles. Literally. In fact, he was going around it at quite a brisk pace. I thought to myself, how could an animal keep doing that over and over again? Well it turns out, the polar bear, named Snowflake, was responding to captivity like other wide ranging creatures who are confined to an extremely small space. I guess Snowflake wasn't really himself and died in 1998. So there were no more polar bear exhibits. I also remember the hippo exhibit fondly. I had never seen such a big creature, up close, waddling towards his pool. There was a duck in the middle of the pool, but once the hippo started ambling toward the pool, I saw the duck make such a rapid motion to get out of the pool, it was funny. Man, that hippo was huge, and I was like a little kid, staring at it with my mouth wide open.Since then, the zoo has had it's share of excitement, when two marmots ran away from their cages and the hunt literally took a few weeks before they found them.

So I was going into the zoo with no expectations. We first hit the Canadian Rockies part of the zoo, where there were mountain goats, wood bison (the largest land mammal in North America, it was 8' tall and eating the grass), owls, etc. There were grizzly bears, who had their back to the spectators and would occasionally flicker a paw. Actually, most of the big animals were either eating, sleeping and not doing much at all. The black bears were a little more exciting. There was a brown one, who was sitting on his hind legs, then lifted a hind leg to scratch below it. There were a couple black bears who wandered up to the spectators and starting gnawing on the metal fence. They looked cute doing that, but in the wild, that would be a different story.

After a picnic lunch, the next exhibit was the Africa exhibits. There were porcupines, snakes and yes, the mighty hippo. Except the hippo, had hidden himself in a discreet corner of the pool (a fairly large one, almost the size of a performance pool at say, SeaWorld), and the way the viewing area is built, you were lucky to see a bit of his nose above the water. I wandered outside to see if the hippo would roll in the mud, but no, he didn't show up. The lion exhibit was not much better. There was a male, laying with his back to the spectators, and four females in different positions of rest. There was an ostrich, a reticulated giraffe and zebra all in one enclosure. The ostrich had a really long neck, and it was interesting watching it pick on the ground, then snap it's head back up. Well, it was fascinating to me, anyways. The elephants were kind of smelly. Outside, there was one with two metal caps at the end of his tusks. I remember vaguely reading about an elephant whose tusks were deterioating, or were breaking off, so I wonder if that was the one. I had forgotten how much excrement an elephant can pump out. I was minding my own business, then all of a sudden, I heard the gushing of water hitting the pavement. I first thought it was someone using a pump, then I looked, and gallons of water were coming out of the elephant. Speaking of excrement, in the gorilla exhibit, there was a gorilla with his back to me, sitting up, and excreting. Every now and then, he would use his right hand, pick up the excrement before they hit the ground (I hope you are not eating or something while reading this, if you are, my apologies), then I assume he would smell it or examine it (I hope it didn't do more than that, but perhaps thankfully, I didn't have a good view), then toss it lightly to his right. Now if this was a gorilla from India, maybe he would be using his left hand to do the "examination". Why is it doing this? I don't know, maybe from the smell, the gorilla knows it is eating the right stuff? (I'm not being serious here).

At 3:00 pm, we stumbled upon a zoo interpreter, educating the audience about the Siberian tigers. I remember in 1995, I looked and looked, but couldn't see them. Today, they were in fine form. They were stalking small childern through the cages, marking their territory and one was threatening another. The interpreter, Sara, was very vivacious and had a volunteer from the audience come up and she dressed the poor man in a tiger outfit, educating us on all aspects of tiger anatomy. Tigers are actually good hunters, despite their bright orange color, since their prey are color blind. The whites of their ears can actually be used to communicate with their young. Sara also cracked the obligatory jokes about skinning a cat, cat's out of the bag, etc.

The Australian exhibit (kangaroo, joeys, tree kangaroos, etc) and creatures of the night (mostly bats) was kind of lame. The indoor building was very smelly and I couldn't concentrate enough without getting out in a real hurry. That's what happens when the sun starts shining and the temperature rises to +25. There was another exhibit with bears (sloth bears or spectacle bears, I couldn't remember the kind) that was interesting. A bear was trying to get into the caged portion of his domain and we couldn't figure out why. I kept staring at this bear. Then someone pointed inside the cage, up at the tree. "There is another bear there, the female. The zookeepr let them mate, then separated the two." I saw the female, up in the tree, smoking a cigarette, or at least relaxing. The male, on the outside was still trying to find a way in when we left to visit the new Dino Ride.

For $4, you get the privilege of riding a simulator, with 17 other people. The ride last about four minutes. The theme is that you are in an all terrain vehicle (ATV), and exploring an island named "Alpha" It's a loosely based theme. In the beginning the ATV rocked back and forth between some trees. Then it fell off a steep cliff, and I was holding on tight to my chair for dear life. I thought to myself: "How is this going to simulate a crash?" Well my answer appeared in the form of a Pterodactyl, who swooped in and caught us. The dinosaur flew over a lava flowing volcano, got attacked by a flying dinosaur with big teeth, so the ATV got dropped into the forest. The ATV was then sideswiped by a T-Rex a few times, the ATV was put in reverse to run away, similar to the Spielberg movie, "Jurassic Park". Later, a helicopter picked us up and we were done our mission. The most frightening part was the beginning, but once you got used to the bumps and turns, it was fun.

We walked back to the Japanese Macaque cage. A baby Macaque had been recently born, and we were lucky to spot it. It was clinging to the mother's belly in a corner of the cage, quite close to the spectators. The baby would climb to the cage, then gnaw at it. It was fun to see, the baby almost fit between the meshes of the cage. Every now and then, the mother would take her right paw out and rein the baby into her stomach. But the baby would invariably climb out again. It was very cute.

We walked around the prehistoric park, then called it a day around 4:30 pm. Not a bad outing, and the weather was quite nice. Rating: 7 out of 10.