Yesterday, we went to the zoo. The weather was beautiful and midweek the zoo was not too crowded. My going in goal was to see the new Komodo dragon. The last one died some years ago and the zoo is slated to get a new one from the Bronx Zoo. Alas, the dragon is not due here until this fall. They are still building its enclosure in the historic reptile house. I was surprised to see the installation underway for the upcoming lantern festival, Animals Aglow. It looks like it will be spectacular. I’ve included a few pics of some of the larger pieces.

Although, I enjoyed seeing the dragon lanterns outside the reptile house, the best part of our visit to this house was a conversation with a zookeeper and docent. In the building’s basement are rooms where they warehouse many of the species that are displayed publicly. They do this so that the displayed individuals can be rotated in-and-out. Among the downstairs rooms is a locked room where all of the venomous species are kept. Over its door is a red light that when lit indicates do not enter, because something bad has happened. Think Snakes on a Plane. The docent added that when she visited that room, she stuck to the middle of its narrow aisle, sandwiched between walls of open-air wire cages and when an overhead lightbulb’s string pull brushed the back of her head, she lost it.

The zookeeper we were speaking with will be one of the two people charged with driving to NYC to pick up the dragon. I hope that he drives carefully and is not pulled over. Can you imagine the cop’s surprise when he opens the back of their truck? We also learned that the zoo’s most valuable asset is housed in this building, the zoo’s antivenom collection for the myriads of poisonous animals. Hearing all of this, I am glad that they have closed the downstairs restrooms.

Next, we visited the small primate house where we found many distressed small human primates upset the canopy trail’s playground was closed. A few of the other primates made it outside. One was furiously trying to disassemble part of the trail so that it could escape. We spent the rest of the afternoon outside, viewing the big cats and the herbivores of red rock country. We closed the zoo.