The Portland Zoo - Part 2

The zoo! The absurdity! Animals locked in cages and tanks, just beyond the security gates! Ten-fifty gets you in, that's the going price of admission. Ten dollars and fifty cents, the same cost as a movie! It's like a movie you walk through—look at all the sets!

THE PENGUINS

Listen to the construction machines roaring outside! They're scaring the penguins! They're all diving underwater to cover their ears. The tractors sound vicious, tearing into the dirt and puking it out by the mouthful. Ten-fifty for this!? This is not peaceful at all! This is loud construction noises echoing through the cave of the polar bears!

In walks a father with his child—too young to know whether it is a boy or a girl. "Watching the observer?" the father asks in a kind, soft voice. I smile, yes indeed. Now throw that child in there with the penguins and we'll have something truly memorable to recall—our day at the zoo.

Those baby arms look just like flippers, wouldn't you agree? The way they flap the same as the penguins' is uncanny! Now let's make out and lie here on the floor, and point at the flapping bubbling spectacle. Look! Your baby shit its pants! And the penguins are eating it up!

THE MONKEYS

The monkeys look like hunched-over little people covered in hair, except around their ass-pink. There they sit on a man-made branch, picking bugs out of their hair. How pleasant! The attention! The touch! The time spent together feeling and snacking and grooming and SLAP!

A kid walks up to me and apologizes in advance. He asks me about my mustache, and how I manage to make it curl like that. WAX! I exclaim! It's as simple as that! The boy looked as surprised as the baboons who had stopped grooming and stopped everything else they were doing just to watch the awkward silence. I look up at them and give them a grin. That's right my boy! MUSTACHE WAX!

THE OTTERS

They flip! They glide! Built to slide through the water and slither through the twigs. Up for air! Then down in a death-defying trail of bubbles. What happens to the otter who loses their love for swimming? What happens to them then? They float.

Don't be sad little otter. You can remember if you try. Just dive right in and let the water slide across your skin. That's it! Happiness! I can see it when you loop up and out of the water, doing back flips—up and out, then arching back and in, headfirst to the bottom, then resurface again.