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Wrapping up the Wonderland of Lights now, Thanks for sticking with me through it.
Now, an unsettling discovery to me: they're demolishing some old and outdated enclosures just because they're not really well-suited to the ways we now understand animals should be kept. I had thought they were originally built as WPA projects but 1930 is far too early for that. Note in the pictures of old animals you can see a raccoon there, and the sign mentions that the grottos have housed, among other animals, coatis. Or at least one coati, the sign doesn't promise more.
This enclosure we haven't seen occupied in years but I recall it having housed a couple meerkats, one of whom was repeatedly hiking a small rock between their legs as if they were using it to break the wall down. Come to think of it I haven't seen meerkats in the zoo in a long while either.
Another of the enclosures, housing nothing but snow. You know, this zoo one had a 'guinea pig mound', just a big enclosure with a modest hill that had guinea pigs roaming tolerably free. When have you ever seen a 'guinea pig mound'?
And one more that I think we last saw in use promising some kind of live animal show we weren't there at the right time to see.
Now I've just turned from the Wonderland of Light to looking at the unlit wooded areas just outside the fun zone.
There's something moody about being out in the shadows like this.
On into the bird enclosure. There's toucans here.
The bird enclosure seen from outside. These buildings I think were WPA-built but see how wrong I was about the grottos.
Oh hey, there were penguins out and out of focus! My camera did not like trying to figure out where to focus on things, particularly in low light.
Remember that wall of colored lights I mentioned yesterday? Here, you finally get to see it, plus an up-too-close view of the 'fence' lights.
Carnivores and primates, finally working together on wordplay.
And a final image, what looks like a resin or something reindeer statue with just a bit of lighting.
Trivia: When imprisoned in 1953 Fidel Castro served in the Presido Modelo jail on the Isle of Pines, built in the late 1920s as a series of round buildings on the panoptical plan of Jeremy Bentham. Source: Cuba: An American History, Ada Ferrer.
Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham.
