Just as I was about to enter the zoo, I encountered three staff members trying to recycle (see photo of one staffer with a telltale blue container) a snapping turtle that apparently had escaped captivity. He wasn’t hard to run down – he was, after all, a turtle – but bringing him to justice proved to be a little more difficult. I learned two lessons – it’s easier if, unlike in the photo, the open end of the container is facing the deserter and be sure to protect your hands when handling a snapping turtle (the unseen staff were procuring thick gloves to aid in the eventual arrest).
I came across two more handlers having problems, this time in regard to opening a door to let a rhinoceros back inside from his outdoor pen. The animal stood motionless, nose up against the door, until it suddenly butted its head against the door, with great vigor, apparently out of frustration at its exile during what was probably its lunch hour. At that point I decided to move on before we reenacted a scene from Jurassic World.
Speaking of Jurassic World, while I saw recent zoo additions of plains zebras and a female polar bear, I didn’t see any dinosaurs, which, if you believe a recent ad, not only exist, but also have been domesticated, sort of. Make your day by watching the video about a velociraptor being used as a service animal.
On my way out of the zoo, I passed a mother asking her child whether he knew why flamingos were pink. I wanted to interrupt and say, “because they weren’t cooked long enough”, but I resisted the impulse to scar the waif for life. The thought did make me hungry, however, so I stopped for lunch at Cafe Brauer, making sure not to order anything that I might have just seen while wandering around the zoo, so no turtle soup.
It’s not everyday that you get invited to a birthday party at a glass blowing studio (great idea). My uncle had done glass blowing as a hobby for years, but he was a scientist with expertise in combustion, so I took no comfort from his experience.
I competed in intramural trivia contests when I was in college and law school, and was on the team representing the University of Illinois in what was billed as the first National Collegiate Invitational Trivia Tournament (or something like that). In those days I studied the almanac. There was no internet or social media. Countries weren’t changing their names every ten minutes. There weren’t 1780 television channels. No Star Wars characters to learn. No Harry Potter to study.