A lying saboteur of a local weatherman promised "a relief from the recent heat wave", and that southwest Missouri "would enjoy a cool weekend fit for going camping" earlier last week, so I foolishly believed him. I planned a trip to a place I haven't been in ages: the Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield, Missouri.
It was all lies. Temperatures ended up climbing past 90 F (32+ Celsius), and while it seemed almost tolerable when my brother and I first got there, the humidity eventually began to soar. It eventually became a bit miserable. That weatherman, clearly a minion of some sinister foreign agency bent on destroying us, needs to be dipped in BBQ sauce and tossed into the zoo's lion enclosure.
But the weatherman's evil scheme did not deter us! I had a good time at the zoo despite the furnace-like heat. Many of the animals sought cool, shady spots in their enclosures, and I eventually did get too worn out and dehydrated to see all the exhibits. But thanks to my brother (the photographer-extraordinaire for this blog post), we got plenty of terrific pictures.
My brother was able to get so many great photos that I'm putting them in here in a "gallery" format, so in some of these picture galleries, you may see a little left-arrow and right-arrow in the photos that will let you scroll through the photos & click on each of the individual pictures.
There were colorful, and loudly vocal, peacocks wandering all around the zoo. I keep wanting to call it a "park" instead of a "zoo", for some reason. It had that kind of "vibe". There should be a left & right arrow in that row of pictures.
One of the best parts of the zoo was the big African animals. Most of the fences had a sign saying something to the effect of, "Warning: We Bite!"
The zoo had it's share of big cats, too. However, it was SO HOT, they were mostly sleeping in the shade.
Let's not forget the other African animals. The giraffes were huge, and seemed both majestic and serene. The zoo had an elevated deck where you could stand and almost look them in the eye, but it was closed for the day when we got to it.
I didn't see any zebras; I think they do have them, but I probably missed that exhibit. We got there just in time to miss the zoo's one elephant, who was being put away for the day when we got to his enclosure. Apparently, the big fellow retires for the day early in the afternoon.
There was lots of other things to see, though. This being southwest Missouri, there was of course an Ozarks Wildlife area, down past this nice quiet boardwalk. As you can see, it wasn't very crowded, that day.
The exhibit included some Mexican wolves.
The mountain lions were actually part of the Ozarks Wildlife exhibit. MY GOSH those things are bigger than I thought:
And let us not forget the deer and wild turkey, which are synonymous with the Ozarks. The turkey photos were hard to get. They are FAST little buggers.
They also had a pair of cute-as-a-button river otters, who swam and played and romped in their own private enclosure & water tank. At one point, one of the cheeky critters decided to, ah, relieve himself at the far end of the enclosure, well away from where the water is that they play in. My brother opined sagely that "at least they go to a secluded area to take a poo. I know people who won't do that." Sadly, he's right.
That's me, in the last photo (with my head cut off, by accident) being greeted by one of these polite chaps.
Finally, in the Ozarks exhibit, is a Bald Eagle. (Yep, the Ozarks has those.) This one was found locally, injured, and kept at the zoo for rehabilitation. After he healed up, he could no longer hunt on his own, so he lives here at the zoo.
They had a big Galapagos Turtle, as well.
And...I got ROBBED by a goat! Read on, for that is something of a long story.
Technically, the zoo's gift shop robbed me, first. When I used to come here as a kid, my favorite thing to do was to go out on the large covered pier built onto the zoo's big pond, beg quarters from my dad, and feed them into the bubble-gum machines located there which produced a handful of dry pet food. This was donated by the nearby (and now defunct) "Hound Dawg Dog Food" factory. One would toss the handful of this dry kibble into the pond, and watch the massive swarm of catfish go into a feeding frenzy to gobble it up.
Nowadays, it seems you are expected to put dollar bills into a machine that converts your money into brass tokens, and use those instead of your own coins in all of the zoo's vending machines (permitted only in designated areas, like the pier and the petting zoo). This includes the machines that demanded $3.00 in tokens for a bottle of water or can of soda. Really?!? Anyway, I went back to the gift shop and explained that "yeah, I know I'm a grown man, don't judge me. I really want to feed the catfish, because, nostalgia and all." The ladies at the counter said it would be even easier to just give me a small paper sack of pre-measured kibble for the sum of $5.00 dollars, for that very purpose...
...while not bothering to mention that THE STUPID PIER WAS "TEMPORARILY CLOSED" and was not currently accessible to the public! Thieves! They didn't bother to tell me that when I told them that's why I was buying the bag of kibble. To add insult to injury, I found out the next day that the $5.00 dollars they told me it cost came to $6.00 dollars on my receipt. Did they factor in a tip?!?
I ended up walking around for a couple of hours carrying this increasingly shopworn bag of pet food for no apparent reason. I tried to make myself feel better by saying "well, you simply gave the zoo a $5 dollar donation." (Apparently, it was a $6 dollar donation.) It was still a mean, crappy thing to do just to get my money...and now that I think about it, given the exorbitant prices at their little outdoor cafe, and asking $3.00 bucks for a soda, it does paint a rather ugly picture of a zoo meant more as a tourist-trap type of business.
To be fair, at least they didn't charge for parking. But, it turned out that the annual Ozarks Empire Fair was in full swing right next door at the fairgrounds, and people were dodging the annual fair's $5.00 parking fee by parking at the zoo and walking over, making it hard for us zoo-goers to find a place to park.
There was also the reptile house, full of snakes and rare toads. The kids love this part.
Don't forget the primates!! The most notable one we saw was this gibbon! He was playing on the branches & ropes set about his enclosure for his amusement.
I'm not sure why the Saki and the King Vulture were in the same enclosure, but they seemed to get along peaceably.
On to the petting zoo, where the critters were cute, of course. Perhaps deceptively so. The burro was a docile and gentlemanly creature, and one of the two brown billy goats was a friendly chap. The alpaca, however, was quite a snob!
So having been swindled out of the one thing I'd looked forward to the most...feeding a swarm of hungry catfish from the same wooden deck I'd done it from at as a child...I decided to take my small paper bag of kibble to the petting zoo and feed it to the goats & alpacas instead. Yeesss, I "get it": one goes to a zoo to see magnificent animals from the African savannah, Indian subcontinent, South American jungles, and so forth; not to feed freaking catfish. Kindly note that I paid the $15.00 entrance fee, the not-really-$5.00-but-actually-$6.00 "bag of kibble fee", and braved heat stroke & dehydration to get my bit of nostalgia, and was clearly taken advantage of by the evil gift shop! So don't judge.
I fed about half of it to the first horned critter I saw: a big brown goat (who I now will call "Bill", see photo above) who was quite friendly indeed. He expressed his gratitude for the handfuls of pet food I gave him by nuzzling my hand and giving me a puppy-dog look. Clearly this made his colleague, the other big brown goat in the same enclosure, aflame with jealousy! How so, you ask? Because when I wandered over to the next section of fence to share the food with these cute little white goats and that holier-than-thou alpaca, this happened:
That's his saliva on my shirt. He ran up on me and snatched the bag that fast. Note the unholy, blue demon-eyes.
I don't know how my brother managed to click the button on his digital camera at just the right instant, but as you can see from the photo, that thieving punk of a goat (the one who HADN'T gotten any as I was feeding some to his friend) had dashed over like a ninja and snatched the entire freaking bag out of my hands, angrily flung it about, scattered pet food all over the place, and dashed it upon the ground before trying to gobble it up ahead of the other critters behind the fence. I never saw him coming! I nearly lost a finger or two in his zeal to get revenge on me. It nearly gave me a heart attack. My brother, of course, thought it was funny as heck.
Eventually, when I got home, I smelled of lions, tigers, and bears...and otters, and emus, and burros, and giraffes, and gibbons, and mountain lions...and half a dozen peacocks. This did not go over well with Assistant Editor Maggie, who gave me this look:
It'll probably be a while before I go back.