Taronga Zoo

I don't know why I thought anything should have changed in the last 3 years...everything was good right up until the ferry. True to form I thought to myself, "it can't be that the ferry is actually on time and is coming in 10 minutes. No, it must be early...yeah, that's it." Due to this line of thought I got on the wrong ferry and ended up in Manly. This was not entirely bad as the ride to Manly yielded some great photos. The negative-nancy portion of my personality must point out however that because I then missed the ride back to Circular Quay, my original wharf, and the trip between Manly and Circular Quay is minimum 1/2 hour, and even after I got back to Circular Quay, I would miss my ferry to Taronga Zoo which would put me back another 1/2 hour, plus the original travel time of the ferry from Circular Quay to Taronga would add another 15 minutes, it would have taken me over 2 hours to correct this mistake via ferry. It was after a lengthy argument with myself that I decided to chance the busses and take an alternative route to the zoo.

I walked to my first stop and low and behold, there were parrots in the trees above me. This is where the lesser known "cup-is-half-full" portion of my personality feels the need to point out that if I hadn't taken the wrong ferry and then missed the ferry to correct that first mistake, I would have never been able to see real live parrots in the "wild" as it were. They kept dropping fruit out of the tree and on to the ground surrounding, and the roof of, the bus stop. It was kind of what I would imagine an animal reenactment of D-day would look like with the parrots being the Germans and humans being the Allied Forces. The Allies were doing their level best to avoid the bombings but could make no ground as far as dislodging the Natzi Birds.

After the confrontation between aerial forces and ground forces, I moved on to my fight to find my way to the zoo. I asked the first bus-driver and he informed me that I would need to transfer and that it would be easy. Luckily, this time, he was right. I made it to the zoo, in a much more reasonable 40 minutes, without further incident and when I approached the ticket counter I was asked if I was a student. I said, "well yes but I can't prove it." and the kind lady said, "well I'll give you %10 for coming on the bus." I thanked her and moved in to my viewing of animals.

Overall the Sydney Zoo lived up to its reputation with well setup exhibits and realistic environments for the animals to live in. The best part of the afternoon was by far the "Free Flight Bird Show." It began with many birds just flying in and landing where they wanted. Then a trainer came out and gave the organized portion of the event. There was a part in the middle where she lost an owl and was unable to go on for a bit because she didn't want 2 birds of prey battling in front of children. The crowd expressed its dissapointment, the older demographic for more sadistic reasons, and started to break up. Luckily they were able to locate and recapture the owl and go on with the show. They finished up with a massive eagle that swooped over people's heads with centimeters to spare. It caused old and young to see through the eyes of a child, which is something that happens far to infrequently, and we were all told to remember our feathered friends in our everyday lives.

I'll finish up with a similar message. Visit your local zoo, aquarium, or museum. There really are some very cool things these institutions are doing that are relevant to us all and they continue to go underutilized. Take a day, you're not that busy, and do something that makes you feel like a kid...it's worth it. :)

Cheers,