HUMAN MENAGERIE

Zoo is a great place to watch a feral species

My daughter and I decided to take advantage of some recent spring weather and visit the zoo.
Outside the zoo she observed that there were elephants painted on the walls but, as she knew from previous visits, there were none inside.
The pachyderm has long been her favorite mammal and she always complains about this obvious shortcoming ... especially knowing that I was fortunate enough to see the great Samorn before his demise.
The spear tipped pikes on the entrance gates have been shielded with plastic following the grizzly impaling of a young man who attempted to climb over them one night.
The point of the pikes has been lost, in all senses, and the gates are now much easier to climb.
Inside the zoo, our first stop was the great apes.
One "enclosure" (not cage) was empty but had recently been used to exhibit human beings.
There was a life-size cut-out of a bald man with a banana on his head with a caption that he represented the world's most dangerous species.
The fine weather had brought specimens of that species out in force ...
mostly wearing track suits emblazoned with car names and pushing obnoxious mini-bogans around in a fleet of small wheeled machines.
Over by the mating hippos I saw a woman drag her kid away, saying to the father "he doesn't need to see that".
Another mum explained, "they are doing something dirty ...
making babies".
Confusing? Dirty? No. Smelly? Yes. The zoo odours were particularly fecund that day.
I don't know what the fuss was about: it was all happening underwater with just a couple of sets of nostrils showing.
My musings were interupted by a bird-like screech, it was a parent insisting her brat look at the llamas ...
actually deer.
And yet another mum was happily cuddling a "possum" until a zoo volunteer told her it was a rat.
In a burst of balletic movement she handed the animal back and recoiled 10m in horror.
Moments later I saw a father point out a tree to his mostly adoring family saying, "And this is a claret ash".
At this, a teenage daughter sighed heavily and said "Oh my god ...
dad, the sign says Australian red cedar."
It was about then I imagined the Emperor Nasi Goreng building the Great Wall to keep rabbits out of China.
Visit the zoo ... it's a great place to watch people.