A Day At The Zoo

Today was Lil' Miss Waring's 6th Birthday. In addition to the bike we had gotten her and other gifts yet to be opened, she had been told that as it was her day we would do whatever she wanted to do. She chose the zoo.......dammit!
The Los Angeles Zoo is rarely mentioned in discussions on the great zoo's of the world. If there were zoo rankings, and there probably are, I doubt if it would merit inclusion in the top 100. To give credit where credit is due, they try, and there is some serious construction going on in an effort to drag the park into the 21st century. Although this will ultimately be very nice if you are a gorilla or an elephant, for the visitors of today it just sucks. All this said, the kid is nuts about animals and so we bought an annual family membership. It has proved to be a good buy, as were the Disneyland passes, and the bribery potential of both have been exploited to the full by myself and the missus.
It has been a beautiful day in SoCal, blue skies, not a cloud in sight. A nice 70 degrees and a cool breeze which fortunately carried the smell of shit away from the zoo. All in all the perfect day to go looking at caged animals and, in my case, MILF's. Mrs. Waring stayed home and since a Father and Child spending Saturday at the zoo screams "Divorced", my ego was treated to lot's of sympathetic smiles from apparently single mums out to rope in some poor bastard desperate for a shag. I don't often get a second look, so when it happens it feels good and puts the extra spring in the step needed to haul my fat ass around a poorly planned and somewhat hilly zoo.
So, the kid was happy, I bought her a hot dog and a cherry icee and an ice cream, we watched the short but impressive "World of Birds" show and even saw a monkey take a shit, the highlight of both our weeks. I'm probably going to give it a month or two before going back again. By that time there will no doubt have been several more of the tragic animal deaths for which the zoo is famed, and hence several more exhibits "temporarily closed" like the former home of what was the only Polar Bear at the zoo (pictured above).