Jane of the Jungle!

For the last couple of weeks, I have been reading one big-ass Jane Goodall biography and I absolutely love it. That woman is fo sho my hero, more because she's not afraid of spiders and ticks than all that scientific, poo-flinging, slutty ape watching stuff she has going on. I love that too though. It's fascinating. I'm not typically one for book learning, unless it's going to lead to some type of a degree or increase in pay, but anthropology is the exception. I could read about anthropology all day long. I'm hoping someday that knowledge will come in handy for NTN trivia at Buffalo Wild Wings. Still waiting patiently for that to happen....

With all this Jane Goodall ape information roiling around in my head, I've been even more motivated than usual to go to the zoo. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE zoos in general. In fact, I already feel a little bit sorry for my future children because we are going to have memberships to every zoo this side of Canada. I already imagine my children begging me to let them stay home to do homework on weekends, rather than going to the zoo AGAIN.

So, this morning, Nic and I went to the Lake Superior Zoo. It's been a rough few years for that place. They lost their accreditation, one of the polar bears died, their director quit. In fact, every time you hear people in Duluth talk about the zoo, they are inevitably shaking their heads and making that "tsk, tsk, what a pity" clicking tongue noise.

I have to tell you...it wasn't that bad. In fact, I found it borderline impressive, probably because I expected so little from it. It's not a big zoo and there aren't any elephants, but the exhibits were mostly clean, the animals were active, we didn't have to fight crowds of people at any point to get close to the animals, and the zoo staff was EXTREMELY knowledgeable. In fact, we spent probably thirty minutes in the education room alone, talking to a volunteer who followed us regaling us with fun stories about each of the animals. She even took out the hedgehog so we could pet the pokey little bugger!

Best part of the entire zoo? There are two parrots who whinny like horses. They have never seen horses in their lives, so the zoo staff can only assume that they learned the sound from watching the National Geographic channel that plays on a small tv in the education room all day long. Their horse impressions were dead on.

All in all, a good time. I would recommend it to anyone in the area with a little time to kill.

Now time for some packing and white stripping because my teeth don't hurt bad enough yet and I like to suffer.