The Zoo!

On Friday, November 18^th, I went to the zoo with a bus full of teachers and kids. It was one of the colorful chicken buses, except that we had rented the whole thing just for us—for the whole day! The kids that came with us ranged in age from about 7 to 17. The older kids were paired with a teacher to help lead a group of 7 to 10 younger kids. Most of the kids had never been to the zoo before. Even one of the oldest students had never visited.

Needless to say, we were all excited. We had bread ham and ketchup sandwiches and orange juice packed for the morning snack, we were getting on our very own bus (still crowded), the kids were screaming different cheers, and all the teachers were with us leaving the library closed for the day!

It took about an hour by bus to reach the zoo. It was beautiful. There was grass—a rare occasion here if you live in any sort of town. Within a few minutes of finishing our snacks in the opening of the zoo, I saw a scene I might never forget—the waterfowl display. There were mallard ducks and flamingos among about 12 or 14 other types of water fowl from about 3, maybe four different continents in the same enclosure!  I couldn’t believe my eyes. I think I remained hung up on this image (as the number of pictures in my camera show) until I reached the snake house.  In stateside zoos, I remember, oftentimes there being one way glass in the reptile houses. But, that was certainly not the case here. I could see the snakes, and the snakes could see me. Even with the special glass, the different snakes give me chill bumps and yet I felt I was being pulled in for a closer look.

As I was leaving, I had a brief moment of panic when I stopped to try to read a sign. I misunderstood. At first, I understood the sign to be warning me of what to do if a snake should get loose—through the two way glass. A few minutes later, after I slowed my mind and my nerves, I realized that it was just an educational sign about what to do if you ever meet a snake in your path. At least, that is what I am telling myself it said.

Later on, I stood entranced, as if I was one of the kids, watching two monkeys fight. They screamed and swung by their tails. They tackled each other and raced round and round the cage among the 6 or 7 other monkeys. All the monkeys were tense. It brought to mind the scene from the movie, Mean Girls, where Lindsay Lohan acknowledges the difference in problem resolution between the animal kingdom and girl world. In her mind the antagonist simply dives across the table to tackle the others girls starting chaos in a high school cafeteria.

This monkey disagreement also reminded me of our human ability to take on too much and the way that makes us feel crazy inside. Crazy like this monkey fight—thoughts running around chasing each other tackling each other and screaming retorts and exclamations about inadequacy. All this monkey business passes in between our ears.

This moment, standing outside the cage watching my thoughts running around, jumping, and swinging dizzily somehow reminded me the beauty of not taking on too much, of refusing to be overloaded as our society might expect us to be. It reminded me to live simply, to rejoice in the beauty of life that God gave us, and to love one another as we should love ourselves, and to remember the power of the simple word “no.”