I Love the Zoo!

OK, not really. We went to the Bronx zoo recently as our "year membership" was almost up and we are not going to renew at this time, maybe later. Anyway, unfortunately for us, we chose to go to the zoo at the same time that EVERYONE ELSE was going to the Yankees/Mets game, which was being held at Yankee Stadium, which we all know is in the Bronx. Yeah, not such a great idea. It wasn't horrendous, though, and once we got past the stadium, the traffic wasn't bad. We stopped at a McDonald's because I thought it would be cheaper than eating food purchased IN the zoo. I may have been wrong. Apparently McDonald's is more expensive in NYC than in Jersey. The Bronx isn't especially affluent so I don't know how these people afford to live there AND eat at McDonald's. Maybe that's why McDonald's wasn't very crowded. Or maybe they were all on their way to the baseball game. I digress...
The good news was that the zoo wasn't crowded. And hey, I like the zoo, for the most part. I used to love going to the zoo. When we lived in Lansing, I took the kids all the time. They were younger then and I think I had more "say" in how we spent our time at the zoo. Here's the problem: I'm a female in a family full of males. While at the zoo, I want to sit and gaze at the giraffes, flamingos, and zebras. But when we go to the zoo we spend most of our time, if not all, blazing past the giraffes where I get a cursory glance at them as I walk by on our way to: the monkey house, the reptile house, or the "world of darkness" a.k.a. the bat house. Here's Peter in the reptile house.















Here's me in the reptile house:
























I swear I wasn't just tired or lazy or overwhelmed with reptiles. For some reason, the zoo employees thought WE were reptiles and I swear it was like 110* in there. I was absolutely melting. When we stepped back outside it felt like we were stepping out into the arctic. I was never so happy to get out of the reptile house.
We did, however, get to spend a little time in the butterfly house so that's at least something. Oh wait, I just remembered. We went in after we had blown right past it and I said, "Wha-?! Wait?! What?!!! We're not going into the butterfly house!?"
And I admit the monkey house was pretty cool. It's actually a gorilla house at the Bronx zoo. And this time the gorillas were out and about, as opposed to hanging around napping far out of sight. There were a couple baby gorillas, too, and they would come up to the glass and "play" with the people standing there. Then they would run back to their moms and start nursing. They were really cute. What is it about gorillas that I, personally, find so daunting? I swear when one of the moms turned towards me, it felt like she was looking right at me. Her eyes and face seemed so wise and knowing. I felt like she was saying, you guys are so stupid, we're the ones who are older and wiser. We know what's really important in life. And then she started picking her nose and eating it and I thought, hmm, maybe not so much. OK, so that didn't really happen, but you KNOW it could've!