I am a concrete-sequential person with border line obsessive/compulsive and autistic tendencies (so my wife says). Along with that I have been married to a special educator for 28 years (come April) and have been through years of higher education (vicariously on my part) along with my wife dealing with multiple degrees on how to observe and understand how people act/react to different stimulus, environments and situations. So needless to say we have an interesting time watching people when we are out and about as we move through life in our own unique and dysfunctional ways. On Monday we were down at the San Diego Zoo. It is a very interesting place to watch social interaction of various individuals and family groups as well as all the animals doing the same thing. So here are some observations that I came to while at the Zoo.

First of all, just like people (usually family) that you steer clear of, there are specific animals that the Zoo Keepers steer clear of. One of the most dangerous critters in the zoo are Polar Bears. They are the only bears that will specifically hunt and kill man, so the Keepers will not under any circumstance be in the enclosure with them because if they are they could be killed. They are also very temperamental and have gotten so accustomed to the Southern California weather that they will only go into the water in their enclosure if the water is between 60 and 65 degrees. The Peccaries are very anti-social and territorial. They will attack savagely any one or anything who comes into their enclosure. They won't just chase them off but will try to kill them. And after they have killed them they will kill them again, and again, and again. Just looking at them should tell you that they have bad attitudes. So the Keepers will not go into their enclosure until they are safely locked away. I don't know what you can do with that information, but put that in the back of your mind in case you happen to find yourself on Jeopardy or playing "Trivial Pursuit" or happen to stumble into a random Peccary enclosure.

Monkeys come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. But one thing that they all have in common is that they are very social and are just like kids. They like to mess with each other and annoy each other for fun just like our kids do. We watched this little guy bounce around annoying the others just for the fun of it. After they got fed up with him and ran him off, he decided to climb up on the fence and mug for the people who all laughed at him and fed his ego. The little guy reminded me of my nephew who does the same thing to his brother and sister and then comes in and mugs for the adults once his siblings give him the boot and then goes back and bothers his siblings when the adults give him the boot. It is a vicious cycle.

Elephants are amazing creatures with a lot of personality. They are very curious and will play games with anything that they can get a hold of. This one is a female who loved to play "peek-a-boo" with the crowd by hiding behind the concrete  and then poking her head out and waving her trunk and snorting to get the people to laugh and take pictures.

Giraffes are very cantankerous and playful. Some of them like to play to the crowd to get a reaction. The young one (6 months old) loved to play and kept trying to get the adults to play with him. He kept harassing his mother who was tired and wore out and just had to lay down for awhile. But he kept trying to get her up and play with him.

The tigers were out and awake which is very rare as they typically sleep about 20 hours a day and are usually hanging out in the back under the bushes. There was a mother and her young son out roaming around. Mom watched from the top of the hill while Junior meandered around down below looking at the people on the other side of the glass. He was trying to look regal and tough, until a lizard scared the daylights out of him and he about wet himself. Mom just looked down at him and shook her head.

But the one that really cracked me up was the Camel. This guy really did his best to get away from the crowd. I guess he reminded me of myself as I can be real anti-social at times and prefer to go out in the garage and putter around or go upstairs and watch TV as opposed to hanging out with folks (especially my wife's family as their kids get real loud which messes with my obsessive/compulsive/autistic tendencies)

So it was a fun and educational time at the zoo. We had a blast watching the critters and how they dealt with us humans. We also watched the humans and how they dealt with each other (God help our society). There were some boisterous kids that I thought about sending into the Peccary enclosure telling them that they loved to be petted, but my wife said no to that one. Oh well, maybe next time.

Allen Worsham
Corona, CA

allenworsham@earthlink.net

http://www.awcreationsandwoodcrafts.com

'Graze in every man's field, but always give your own milk' J. Vernon McGee