Flamingo Reflections

It was a dark and stormy night, followed by an even stormier morning. I was a little slow in getting out of bed and when I did, I discovered that Anne was gone and so was the car. I was stranded, at least for a while. The rain let up and rather than subject my bicycle to the duress of Skinker’s Swamp amid flash flooding, I decided to walk. I got as far as Kaldi’s on DeMun, when I got a text. It was bad news. A friend had passed last night. Anne and I had lunched with this friend just before we left town for the summer and I had thought of reaching out to this friend just yesterday. Bike races are featured this coming weekend and I thought that getting together for dinner would be a good idea. Like we did last year. You always think that you have more time than you really do. As the mutual friend who relayed this sad news always says, never buy green bananas.

With a lot on my mind, I continued on to the zoo, which I also hadn’t seen all summer. School and the morning’s rain had tamped down the crowds, which always seems to make the animals more responsive to the few people that are there. I got a few good shots. I liked this one the best. I was trying to recreate one of my all time favorites, which is only doable at this time of year, after a full summer of bird poop and heat allows the algae to turn the water a brilliant lime green. There wasn’t enough sun today to rival the sparkle of the previous shot, but the reflections of other flamingos in the background add some interesting character. I’m not sure what the zoo plans on doing with the flamingos come winter. In the past, they got warehoused in the old sea lion show exhibit, but that has been torn down and will be replaced with an outdoor enclosure for small prehensile mammals, called Primate Canopy Trails.