There are so many things in life that make us feel like time is quickly passing and we are getting older by the minute. With bills, gas prices, grocery shopping, alarm clocks, and gyms, it is hard to remember what it felt like to be seven years old. There are, however, a few things that do instantly transport me back through time: flying a kite, doing cartwheels, jumping rope, using glitter, spinning until I get dizzy, or reading Dr. Seuss. There are places too that evoke this feeling. One of those places is the Zoo.
I hadn't gone to a zoo in years. I remember loving the hippos, penguins, and rhinos the most and always wanting to go say hello to them upon arrival. As a kid, my parents took me to the San Francisco Zoo quite often and I'd watch as the hippos blobbed around in their pond or as the Polar Bear hid from the sun. I remember feeling an immense sense of joy when I took these trips, thinking it was like I'd traveled the world in a day or fallen into a magic land. It was another world entirely, apart from my life of preschool or kindergarten or elementary school. It was so different that I thought it might as well be Mars. But it was just the zoo.
I hadn't thought about the zoo in a long time, and I hadn't been to one in an even longer amount of time. But I have two friends who love the zoo. As a matter of fact, there is probably no other place they'd rather be or thing that they'd rather do than be at the zoo. They spend their weekends visiting the animals, saying hello to the Zebras, and sketching the animals. This apparently began when one of them was brought to the zoo on a college course field trip for her studio drawing class. The idea was that they'd spend time sketching animals, and she loved it so much that she never stopped going. I, however, never had that professor and thus never got to explore the Oakland Zoo, a fact which my friends strongly felt needed correcting. So, a couple of weeks ago I finally took them up on their offer and began my fist exploration of the Oakland Zoo.
The zoo, oddly enough, did not contain the animals that I'd favored as a child: hippos, penguins, or rhinos. It was, however, full of flamingos, bears, chimps, monkeys, gorillas, zebras, elephants, camels, huge turtles, otters, bats, goats, rabbits, and giraffes.
I would be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy watching the chimps fly from branch to branch. I would also be lying if I said that I wasn't jealous of those chimps as they swung through the branches and perched on the tops of trees. They watched as intently as they munched on leaves and picked at their feet. They seemed so content sitting there in their replacement universe. I couldn't help but wish that humans could be content in their worlds too.
It wasn't just the Chimps, found other animals at the zoo fascinating too. The Otter, in particular, was really showing off for us and seemed to be the most purely happy creature that I'd ever seen. When he saw us, he jumped from his pool and ran over to the grass below where we stood. He plopped down onto the mud and sat with his legs splayed out on the ground. He turned his head up to us and grinned. After sitting like this and watching us for a while, he rolled over on to his belly despite being seemingly happy to just stare at us and dry in the sun. After some time, his buddy ran over to us too and they both rolled around in the mud together. I was a bit jealous of them and wanted to jump in their pit and roll around in the mud as well, but then I thought better of it.
I'll just have to go back and visit my happy Otter and Chimp friends again, and in the mean time hope that others learn from their happiness.
Location: Oakland Zoo, Oakland, CA, U.S.A.
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