Final zoo anecdotes of 2010

I won't ever work at the zoo again. In 2010, that is.

Today produced the following interactions with zoo patrons:

--A customer told me she saw a visitor bring a seeing-eye dog into the feline house. Bad idea. In her words, "the cheetahs were hopping and the lion king was looking at lunch." Wish I could have seen it.

--Mother to her daughter: "I saw on TV this morning that spiders have fuzzy legs. That's how they stick to the ceiling."
(Child mutters something)
Mother: "Did you know that when I was your age they hadn't even invented spiders?"

--When I was sweeping near a table, a young girl asked her father what I was doing. The father turned to me and said "I don't know, what do you call that? Sweeping?" Holding my broom and taken aback by the question, all I could respond with was "Um, sweeping, yes."

--A very excited boy yelled to me, "Thanks for the food!" Then he ran over to me and proudly showed off the pressed penny our machine had made for him, pointing to a smudge he claimed was Abraham Lincoln.

And I didn't learn this today, but: did you know that the hoofed mammals are not allowed outside in the winter? It's because if an ungulate slips, he or she is much more likely to break a leg.

Happy 2011!

Social experiments at the zoo

Today I had it in my mind to play Santa Claus.

Recently, I've been going through some of my old toys to see which ones I could throw out/give away and which ones retained some sentimental value. I have a vast collection of toy cars, and after sorting through them I found a few dozen I could part with. Since the Salvation Army and most other outlets apparently don't want used toys (and who would want decades-old Matchbox cars, anyway?) I decided to find creative ways to give them away.

I took one bright green Lamborghini (pictured below) to the zoo in a gesture that was half altruism and half curiosity. If I left a toy car in the dining area two days before Christmas, in a place guaranteed to host lots of little kids, would it still be there at the end of the day? I placed it near the trash bin (where everyone inevitably goes) before 9am. Then I waited.

At 1:30, as I returned to clean up the dining area, the car was still on top of the trash bin. It had definitely been moved since 9am, but no one had taken it. Part of me was upset. Was this a judgment on the type of toys I grew up on? Were today's four-year-olds more interested in things with microchips?

My mom later said it was likely some kid did pick up the car, but was told by his/her parents that it may have been left there by another kid -- in other words, Put it back! This is probably what happened. Let it be known: people who visit the zoo two days before Christmas are not inclined to take something that's not theirs, even a toy with no apparent owner. I'll have to get rid of my old toys through a good old-fashioned rummage sale.

I brought the car home. It survived getting snatched up at the zoo; I might as well give it a reprieve and keep it around.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone!

Santa is watching, kids

Three stories from today's shift at the zoo, a place that can still provide anecdotes in the dead of winter.

1) I was talking with a middle-aged employee and at one point asked if she was from the Milwaukee area. She volunteered the exact street where she grew up, and it just happened to be the very same one I am living on -- just a block down from my house, in fact.

2) A chaperone came up to the counter and bought Twizzlers for the three or four school children crowding around her. While I rang up her order, she asked me if there was anything going on with Santa today. "No," I said, "Why do you ask?" She then told me she saw Santa and his wife walking down near the caribou. I said no, the zoo's Breakfast/Lunch with Santa isn't until the weekend. She smiled and left it at that.

I wonder now if she was making the whole thing up and expected me to reply with something like, "Oh yeah, he's just here looking for some new reindeer!" That would go along with the whole caribou thing. After all, there were kids around her, some of whom might still have been the believing age. I might have played along if I'd been quick enough, or if she'd given me more of a hint. Or maybe there was really someone dressed as Santa wandering around the zoo.

3) There is still one pay phone at the zoo. I have never, ever, seen it used. Today, as I was wiping off a counter in my restaurant, a zoo employee asked if I could keep an eye on some of the school children wandering around the building. Apparently, one of them had prank-called 911 from the pay phone. I wondered not where the kids' chaperones were, but instead why these whippersnappers were so desperate to get big lumps of coal in their stockings.

Christmastime Rhymes

Something that has bothered me for several Christmases: a few verses just don't rhyme in the carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." In the first verse, we have sing/King, mild/reconciled, rise/skies, and finally, proclaim/Bethlehem. What's up with this? Did the author just get lazy and force a rhyme to fit the hymn?

I have a theory. Charles Wesley wrote the carol back in 1739 -- toward the beginning of what we know as the Modern English period, if my class at Lancaster taught me anything. My guess is that they hadn't yet worked out the kinks in the system. Certain words just weren't pronounced the same as they are today. Either proclaim was pronounced proclem or Bethlehem was pronounced Bethlehaim.

Perhaps someone more knowledgeable could help me out with this?

(This happens again in other verses. In the second, come is rhymed with womb. In the fourth, seed is rhymed with head. In the third, righteousness is rhymed with peace, and no one can tell me that wasn't just Wesley being lazy.)