I do believe it's true

So today, following more numerical experiments that I believe are working out just like we want (I'll need to do a little more work to be sure, and I'm still dubious about some of the methods we're applying, but think I'll have my doubts settled soon enough), we went out to the zoo. Eventually, we got out, anyway; the connecting bus from Choa Chu Kang couldn't have been slower; we counted seven other buses arriving at the same berth before our bus got there. And I needed my zoo membership renewed, introducing a longer delay as (of course) they'd changed the membership schemes and I had to decide about a new policy and the discounted admissions for guests-of-friends-of-the-zoo was discontinued. Typical.

The result was we only had a couple hours to take in the zoo, and things were definitely happening, particularly since a couple flocks of schoolchildren were running through, opposite our direction. The mousedeer were really quite remarkably cute; to balance that out, someone had just wound up the ringtailed lemurs so they were hopping about in excess, except for one who was tucked away in the corner for a time-out. Curiously, the raccoons were placid, hanging out nibbling at one another or just laying on logs, particularly the one who looked like a red panda. The new giraffes were not in the enclosure marked for giraffes, forcing us to wonder where they were -- you'd think they'd be hard to lose, after all.

African wild dogs were running around, squeaking like chew toys and snarling, and chewing very noisily on bone-laced meat, making a perfectly horrible sound that forces me to squirm yet. The Malayan Sun Bear was yet another of the many species which look like mahto; and the polar bears looked surprisingly well de-greened. We closed out the day with some speculations about the structure of the wallaby/antilopine kangaroo society in the walk-through enclosure and drew inspiration for a children's book from a small wallaby hanging around a much larger marsupial. We'll let you know.

Trivia: During World War II the civilian production of vacuum cleaners in the United States was halted. Source: Don't You Know There's A War On?, Richard Lingeman.

Currently Reading: Planet Quest: The Epic Discovery of Alien Solar Systems, Ken Croswell.