Trip to the Zoo

Last Friday, we went to the zoo for Ben's birthday. If you start thinking children are too wonderful, I recommend going to the zoo on a field trip day and surrounding yourself with hoards of other people's children. It makes you realize that not only is your child not unique, but very shortly he will morph into a gangly middle-schooler who talks too loudly and doesn't watch out for strollers.

Speaking of strollers, we brought ours, but Ben preferred to walk and then be carried when he got tired. (Some of you may note his Elmo glasses and shoes and laugh to yourselves about my Elmo post from last September. Yes, we've surrendered to Elmo.)


The trip got off to a rocky start when this bird started screeching and Ben started sobbing. Although Ben later insisted, "I'm not scared," we were skeptical.


As we walked along the interminable River Trail, we showed Ben all kinds of wonders--a cheetah, a rhino, elephants--but he kept repeating patiently, "I want to see monkeys." (He did note that the elephant was "like on TV"...sigh.)


We took a break for lunch...


... and then finally found the primate house. Monkeys at last! (Or macaques, to be precise. A few days ago, Tom and I were googling people from college, and I discovered that someone I dated briefly had done his doctoral dissertation on giving functional MRIs to macaques. As I watched the macaques swing around their enclosure, I wondered how on earth researchers are able to get them to hold still long enough to be imaged. Then the part of me trained in regulatory compliance started imagining how you'd get them to give informed consent--would you have to have a primate advocate explain the procedure in their own language?)


Tom nudged me and pointed out that Ben was getting tired. Ben actually let us put him in the stroller on the way out. On the way home, he fell asleep in the car. He was satisfied: he had seen his monkeys.