Someone Told Me: "It's All Happening At The Zoo..."

Wow, it's really been forever, hasn't it? 2L kinda ate my life and forced me to spend my waking hours doing things other than blogging. This was a problematic development to say the least, as I kinda liked having a place to muse to to the wider world. I'm gonna try to keep this updated more often, and I've got two posts in the works about the major events of 2010; these will be out in the next few days, along with a larger post about 2L. I guess that, for now at least, I'll start with the most recent occurence:

With the one day of full freedom I had, I followed Amanda and Jessica (Amanda's roommate) to the National Zoo. I don't know how in hell I've been here for nearly two years without going to the zoo. I love the zoo, and I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago all the time when I lived there. I guess law school got in the way.

The National Zoo is relatively impressive, for not being Lincoln Park or San Diego. They have pretty much what you'd expect to see at the zoo: Large Cats, Elephants, Monkeys of various sorts, etc... However, the two things that stood out the most had nothing to do with these animals, but with my two favorite animals at the zoo: Otters and Turtles.

Otters: I love otters; they might be my favorite zoo animal. I was definitely spoiled by the one in Chicago: he would swim right up to the glass, and follow you when you walked back and forth, which is surprisingly fun. The National Zoo has a smaller breed of otters, and they didn't look like they were doing much. There was a small half-log, about 18"x9", and I could only see one otter head and one otter tail poking out. I assumed that there was only one otter in there, which isn't nearly enough for such a large habitat. Soon, the tail at the end turned into a head, which was good, as two otters are always better than one. When the two wriggled out from under the log, they were soon joined by a third. These three otters walked over to the other end of the habitat, laid on rocks, and completely refused to go in the water. I swear they were doing this on purpose; the habitat is laid out for the specific purpose of allowing people to see the otters swim underwater, and I think that they'd had about enough of living up to the expectations of others. This would have been awesome enough on its own, but upon looking back to the log, I noticed three entirely new otters wriggling out, who then proceeded to do the same routine as their ottery predecessors. This log was like an otter clown car; I actually went back at the end just to make sure there were no other otters in there. Fantastic stuff.

Turtles: The turtles were at the very end of our trip, having accidentally passed them the first time. The National Zoo has a thing for turtles; they own turtles of almost every shape, size, and color imaginable. The final turtles we saw had two notable characteristics: 1) they were very large, and 2) they were very obviously having Turtle Sex. Turtle Sex is a very awkward-looking thing; it's kinda like one turtle is trying to climb the other and continually failing. So, having moved on from the Turtle Sex, I was looking at the other, less amorous turtles, when a little girl walked up to the den of iniquity and said "Awwww! It's so cute! That turtle is trying to climb the other one!" Now, its not my place to tell small children about the birds and the bees, especially if their mother is in no mood to do so, so I just sat there and tried to crack up as quietly as possible. Turtles rock.

Again, apologies for taking so long to post. More stuff upcoming.

May all your hits be crits,
B