by Marli Hadden
Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the Calgary Zoo. I tend to go once per year to honour that our fine city has a good one. It was a perfect Tuesday afternoon of strolling and gawking, not yet swarming with summer crowds and warm, but not a scorcher.
There were a few highlights. We saw an ostrich chase down his zookeeper in a fit of hostility. Luckily this poor fellow had a shovel to protect himself from the aggressive pecking of the massive bird. We witnessed a plethora of different animal genitalia, many of which were unabashedly on display for the patrons. The most impressive I must say were the melon-sized testicles of the Eurasian wild boar. The penguins always seem to be the life of the party – spritely and chatty. These cheerful waddlers are usually my favourite, but last Tuesday the following event transpired that absolutely made the outing.
A young boy, maybe 10 years old, was excitably racing around the Canadian Wilds exhibit, clearly experiencing stimulation overload as one does at the zoo. He ran up to a statue of a moose without realizing that it was in fact a statue; when it clicked in that he’d been tricked he became enraged. With disdain dripping from his mouth, he shouted “WASTE OF MY TIME!” and tore off in another direction.
I was belly laughing at this kid’s passionate outbreak, but I also really appreciated where he was coming from. He couldn’t be bothered with the fake, with the non-experiences, he was here to LIVE the zoo and he was not wasting time! I respect the shit out of that.
