- 7/29/06
The National Zoo sponsors a few "Snore and Roar" nights per year. We went
to one of the adults-only versions.
We arrived a bit before six and put up our tents, which was reasonably
straightforward, then had some wine and cheese, because it's well known
that if you're going to be outside in 90+ degree weather and hanging
around with large maneating predators, it's best to prep yourself with a
few glasses of Chardonnay first. Then they took us to the big cat house.
We had to stay behind a yellow line a couple of feet away from the
wirelink fence but believe me, you kind of want to be that far away when
there's a very awake and lively lioness a few inches away from the other
side of the fence. The lioness was very sociable (interested in humans ;)
and growled and chuffed quite a lot in a friendly way. Though as the
keeper noted, the cats love the keepers and respond to their voices and
everything but if the bars were to go away or a gate were to be left open
the keeper would suddenly become a "two legged antelope" and would
instantly be in mortal peril. The tiger we went to see next was not so
keen on having humans around and would pace from one cage to the next,
which didn't help as there were humans outside each. Eventually he flopped
down in disgust. We took lots of pictures of both.
Back outside in the zoo we saw various smaller animals being fed
(including a fishing cat getting her goldfish) and went on a flashlight
tour for the next couple of hours. Most interesting were the Mexican
wolves and the maned wolves, who you do not normally get to see slinking
around after dark. We also saw elephants and giraffes, a cheetah, a
Przwalski's horse, red panda, capybara, oryx, bald eagle and sealions. We
were escorted all the time by a zookeeper guide and didn't have free rein
to go where we wanted, but she was taking us to the best stuff anyway.
Sleeping in the tent would have been easier if it had not been for the
clicking of an electric fence and the snoring of one of our fellow zoo
visitors in an adjacent tent. The animals themselves were reasonably
quiet. At least till the following morning when the gibbons got going. But
we were already up and about by that time (6am or so). In the early
morning we walked around by ourselves. We spent a lot of time watching the
baby panda, one year old, doing gymnastics and being generally cute and
panda-ish. We saw golden tamarinds too. Lots of other stuff. Earlier the
lion and tiger islands had been deserted but we swung by again on our way
out and arrived just in time to see the tiger come out, pace around his
domain for several minutes and then disappear back indoors. Next we had
the same luck with the lioness, who was being fed a breakfast knucklebone
and took it off away into the bamboo to eat it. So that was good,
considering they normally sleep 20 hours a day and are generally quite
inert when we're there.
We headed for home and air conditioning at about 10. It was worth it, but
we certainly needed our afternoon naps and didn't venture out into the
heat at all for the rest of Sunday!
