Family Outing

We took Baby Girl to the Fort Worth Zoo today. Mommy thought it would be fun little outing, and since we’ve heard that the Dallas Zoo runs a distant second to the Fort Worth Zoo, we figured, why not? It would be a chance to get out and about, explore a little bit more of our immediate surroundings, and enjoy what was turning out to be a spectacular day. Mommy had taken off the last two days of the work week, so we figured that we ought to put them to good use.

Driving in Texas is always an adventure. As I may have mentioned previously, it isn’t usually a good one. On its face, Texas would seem like a pretty good place to have a car. Lots of wide open spaces, a well thought out and executed highway system, and when not in their cars, a remarkably friendly and nice bunch of people. When you put those same friendly, nice people in cars however, they turn into the most remarkably retarded bunch of inconsiderate morons this side of the TSA. My single biggest complaint is that turn signals seem to be voluntary, followed closely by what seems to be a uniquely Texan desire to abruptly fit the largest, poorest handling SUV’s into the smallest gaps between two cars they can find.

It takes considerable concentration on my part not to use the full arsenal of four-letter words and their modifiers with our precious snowflake in the car. I’ve also started daydreaming way more than I should about car mounted paintball guns loaded with paintballs filled with neon pink bird poop. It also doesn’t help that Texans tend to veer wildly across the gap between the freeway and the exit, you know the one clearly delineated as a section of the asphalt one should explicitly not be driving on, rather than miss their exit.

Having braved the idiocy of the Texas freeway system, we arrived at the zoo, which despite Mommy’s notion that it might not be crowded because it was a weekday, was quite crowded. Not inconveniently so, but enough that it was full of lots and lots of people, most of whom seemed to be in the same circumstance as Mommy and myself, i.e. pushing a stroller and snapping semi-terrible photos on their iPhones.

The zoo itself is pretty well appointed as far as zoos go. Lions, tigers and bears, oh my. Our first stop was the primate section, which despite my fervent hopes, did not feature any of said primates flinging poop at the gawkers. There were gorillas, orangutans, gibbons, baboons, an assortment of smaller, fuzzy and cute monkey types, as well as a few monkeys of indeterminate origin. I suppose I could have read the informational signs describing them, but I was too busy keeping an open eye for some monkey winding up like Roger Clemens (who thanks to steroids, was nearly as strong as your average monkey), to worry about verifying their pedigree. Given the prevalence of the poop flinging reputation of monkeys, it was disappointing.

From there we wandered onto a replica of the African plains, where a couple Rhinos, some lions, a few giraffes, and a couple hippopotamuses were lounging in the sun. I do have to note that having had the chance to see some of these beasties in the wild in Africa, it is kind of depressing to see such magnificent animals confined to spaces that are likely smaller than what these animals considered to be their bathrooms in the wild. I suppose it’s how most people feel about their apartments in Manhattan. The rhinos in particular looked dismayed about their current circumstances, with one of them standing by the door from one enclosure to the next, looking like it would be happy to wreck the door if it had the energy anymore.

There were some elephants, some meerkats, a rather fat warthog, and lots of birds (we didn’t hang around the birds much, as both Mommy and I have had some issues with bird poop on our cars recently that have put birds on our not-getting-a-card-this-year list). We did get some good shots of the flamingos, which because of the opening credits of Miami Vice, I have a special place in my heart for.

Overall, it was a nice little jaunt. Mommy was disappointed that Baby Girl was more interested in the people at the zoo than the animals, but what do you expect from a 6 month old baby? We did miss the Komodo dragon, which was disappointing, but by the end of the day, Baby Girl was tuckered out, the sun was starting to worry us (nobody wants a bright red baby), and since we had walked more in the past three hours than either of us had managed in the past month, it was time to go.

The only other events of note were the animal adoption program we read about online and an incident in the car on the way home.

We have been considering getting a pet, but our hopes were dashed when we got to the Zoo, and realized that the adoption program they were running was more a of a give-us-money-and-we’ll-let-you-pretend-that-you-have-some-stake-in-a-wild-animal thing, than a take-home-an-exotic-mammal type of thing. We probably should have figured that out before we got to the zoo and saw the signs about adopting a giant sea turtle, but that’s what you happens when you get excited.

The other incident was that Baby Girl’s digestive tract started to act up as we hit rush hour traffic near home. She didn’t drop a deuce, but Lord we thought she did, and if I hadn’t been trapped in a hot car with no chance of escape, I would have been beaming with pride at the sheer pungent power of the smells she was creating with the thunder from down under. Mommy was in the back seat, which is what makes it funny.