Firstly, note to self. A solo night walk to a dam on the reserve to find the mysterious loud night croakers, will end in wet shoes, no frogs, covered in 'black jack' ie prickly weed and challenged by neighbours who think you are scouting out the Reserve for a home invasion.
Saturday, despite being a tad animal and bird weary, we decided to check out Pretoria Zoo, which is supposed to be one of the top zoos in Africa if not the world...guess funding aint what it used to be. Definitely dilapidated in places, with some ratty looking enclosures and sad animals. Some nice items here and there (like Komodo Dragons!)...
(hippo says yawn...)
(getting to pet that water buffalo I always wanted to)
Generally however the people were more entertaining to watch than the animals. From the unhelpful, disinterested staff 'I sell ice creams I DO NOT KNOW where the snakes are!' to the huge family groups yelling at the animals to do things, to the corpulent zoo visitors riding around on crazily fast golf carts rather than walk. A family of large Afrikanners careened past us, over corrected and slammed at full speed into an eagle cage...the passengers were too large to fly out, rather they rolled out onto the ground and commencing wailing. They took out a good portion of fencing, dented the cage and almost took us out.
We tried to get help: 'I CLEAN, not help you', finally told someone who hopefully went to assist them. We then saw an infant fall off the back of another kart (whose mother attempted to calm it by putting a giant mammary in its face.) and a cop car racing around the zoo to find hooligans yelling at the lions (not me).
Whether it is a zoo or the country, things do fall apart and you hope individuals will rise above their inequalities, self interests ands differences to keep the whole on track
Thoughtful Manfred
No comments:
Post a Comment