It's a light and tumble journey

[austin_dern]

Friday we slept in, although not as long as I might have guessed for spending the day wandering an amusement park with several hours driving on either side of things. It's probably sensible to follow an exciting and active day like that with something quieter, and bunny_hugger and I went to a reasonably quiet, peaceful attraction: the Potter Park Zoo.

The Zoo used to be the responsibility of the City of Lansing, but, you know how it is with city budgets and things that cost money, so the funding now comes from Ingham County. This mostly affects the elimination of free-admission days for Lansing residents since that's a bit obnoxious to the rest of the county, but we would've been there the wrong day for that old schedule anyway, and instead there's reduced charges for parking and admission for residents.

It's not a large zoo, compared to the Smithsonian's or the Bronx's, but a zoo doesn't need to be large to be interesting. It hasn't got the really big-name marquis animals such as tigers or elephants which draw crowds but also demand enough attending and care as to wipe out any ability for a small zoo to support anything else; the highest-ranking animals here would be several bald eagles (at that moment kept in a cage on the ground, so we could easily see the birds staring back at us and undoubtedly considering just how delicious our eyeballs would be), penguins, and kangaroos. Also somewhere around the place were pony rides, although I don't think we got direct evidence of them. And according to the web site there are red pandas somewhere, although I don't think we even knew there were red pandas until after we visited.

Where we did start was the aquarium exhibit, featuring corals and clownfish and the curious brilliantly colored forms of water life that stand out so brightly with a bit of ultraviolet light. They also defy normal attempts to photograph them using a tripod-less camera. You know how it goes. The room also features clutches of human children running in and out and saying, ``Nemo!'' while pointing at faintly terrified fish. Occasionally they also cheer for ``Dory!''. We had to suppose the docents are used to that sort of thing by now, based on how you never hear about contract killers being sent after Pixar.

One of the nicest exhibits was for the North American River Otter, which had a small tribe of otters some of them not even hiding from the public even though it wasn't even feeding time. Their pond and hills were maybe a little short on toys, but they had flowing water, which was probably all that was really important. There's also a spot where a wooden bridge goes over the water, and while it was far from the main gathering of otters we waited patiently, and sure enough, one finally wandered over and dove under the bridge. It pays to watch patiently at a zoo.

There was fair evidence of remodeling and renovation at the zoo, primarily shown by several houses in which animals were clearly not in their proper cages. This stood out most in the house containing lemurs of various stripes and rings, where as I remember it the outer exhibits didn't have any of the lemurs they were billed as having --- some were empty, but most had something, usually the animals supposed to be in the cage in the center --- while the cage in the center had nearly all the lemurs to be seen. (There were a couple outside, as well.) Probably at some point this will all be sorted out, although there were some disputes within other packs of kids about what to believe, what the animal looked like it was or the sign naming it.

Trivia: In the midsummer of 1879 Thomas Edison described his electric dynamo as his ``Faradic Machine'', after Michael Faraday. Source: Edison: A Biography, Matthew Josephson.

Currently Reading: Clowns, John H Towsen. OK, satirical clowns throw me for a bit of a loop. And some of them could be quite funny while showing a lack of ability to anticipate consequences, eg: In 1907, [ Vladimir Durov ] appeared in Berlin at a time when kiser Wilhelm was engaged in military preparations. Durov asked his pig, ``Was willst du?'' (``What do you want?'') The pig rushed at a helmet Durov had placed on the circus carpet, butting it with her snout. Speaking for the pig, Durov said, ``Ich will helm.'' (``I want the helmet.'') But it was obvious to everyone that these words also could mean ``I am Wilhelm.'' The suggestion that the Kaiser was a war-hungry pig did not go over well with the authorities. Durov was arrested, trid, and banished from Germany for lèse majesté. I mean, what did he expect would happen? On the other hand, he did get away with gags like that in Tsarist Russia for his whole career, so maybe he just didn't know what to expect from the slightly insecure German Monarchy.