Unfortunately, most of our excursion reminded me of the first half of Jurassic Park, where the soon-to-be-screaming/eaten visitors sit idly in their fancy Jeeps wondering where all the extinct dinosaurs are.  I guess it was nap time, because 90% of the animals were passed out after an undoubtedly long Friday night at the trough, or hiding (and probably passed out) which made for a somewhat lackluster zoo experience.  I briefly considered, as an homage to the movie, knocking out a squirrel and dangling it in the tiger habitat in hopes that Tigger might spring to life.  Sadly, the squirrel got away.

There was a few flurries of animal activity however, the first an unexpected treat near the wolf enclosure.  Fortuitously (for us at least), some disaster befell someone nearby and fire trucks were dispatched, sirens blaring, to help.  The wolves mistook this aural explosion as a rival pack howling wolf ethnic epithets (“your mother is a Siberian Husky”) and immediately responded with endless wailing and West Side story-esque prancing and snapping, much to everyone in the vicinity’s delight.  After all, how often do you get to hear wolves howling?  In Syracuse, at least?

The penguins were also reasonably awake, and demonstrating their unique brand of flying-less bird fun.  Justine’s a big fan of them, excitedly tapping on the glass and laughing as they unceremoniously pooped in the water.  And the monkey house was a flurry of activity as well, with the various species of apes happily swinging about, flinging poo, and checking each other for suspicious lumps -the latter prompting a young boy to ask him parents if “that is the doctor monkey” – which the stethoscope around its neck made pretty obvious to me.  Stupid children.

Justine did her best to give the appearance of having fun on our little daddy-daughter excursion, happily pointing at the various animals and muttering random syllables in their general direction. But nowhere was she more excited than outside the lion cage, which in this particular zoo is surrounded by (what i assume is) one-way glass. Her eyes lit up as we arrived, clamored up to the window and of course began to point and pound, too young to realize that waking a sleeping lion is probably not the safest course of action.

But to her, it was just a super-sized version of our house cats.  Although I doubt these cats would tolerate her kind of petting.  Or any kind of petting for that matter.  At least not without a squirrel as a peace offering…