Animals Watching Animals

Last week was Mother's Day, but it was also Morgan's 31st birthday and my mother's 50th birthday. As you can imagine readers, during the week I was willfully immersed in a pool of estrogen, only to emerge at the other side of the weekend feeling that my soul had become a finely scented potpourri contained within my body.

Morgan's birthday went over well; the family has been avoiding elaborate birthdays lately due to lack of funds, but she received some nice e-cards. Her boss at work changed all the cash registers to display a message wishing her a happy birthday, which was nice but then the cashiers all had to be retrained in their use; they don't adapt well to changes in the work environment. Exaggeration aside, when she got off of work she baked herself a chocolate cake, and ate it as well, defying the old adage.

On Saturday, we celebrated my mother's 50th birthday and Mother's Day by going to the Philadelphia Zoo. It never ceases to amaze me that even on her birthday (perhaps moreso) my mother's personal wishes are ignored by those around her, but she always takes it in stride. We spent the day walking around looking at animals that looked somewhat less than thrilled to be on display for large crowds of smelly humans.

Only at the zoo can one truly see the casual degrees of cruelty humans exhibit toward animals. Of course we all know there are the worst breeds, which I got to see a few of during the day. There were the children who wanted to chase the peacocks around as they roamed the zoo, but there were others, like the woman who thought it was funny in the primate house to set off the flash on her camera repeatedly right in the faces of the spider monkeys "just to watch them flinch" (the lovely Morgan confided in me that she really wanted to deck the woman but had restrained herself). And you always get those people who utterly ignore the "don't tap on the glass" sign and tap the glass, literally right below the sign, to get the animals' attention. Remind me again, which group are the animals?

It being the middle of May, we witnessed several pairings of the zoo's wildlife, but the one that stands out in my mind was between two giant tortoises, because the crowd gathered around the pen became highly excited, whooping and cheering and giving catcalls as though they were at a frat party cheering on an amorous couple then going about their business claiming that we're the civilized ones.

I'll confess this to you in all honesty, readers: I dislike the zoo. It's a reminder to me that we really haven't come very far in becoming more civilized and humane in the past few hundred years, we've just gotten a better idea how to be civilized, which makes it even worse when we inevitably ignore it.