~karyanakyoko

I had a wonderful time yesterday. MJ was the perfect little man. I have never been more proud of him in my life, nor have I been more soaked. It rained the whole day. But MJ did not complain even once. To be matter of fact he relished it. We accidently parked on the Garden side of the Riverbank Zoo and we just barely missed the tram, so we had to walk the whole way. He loved walking through the water, but even more than that he seemed to enjoy trying to catch up to the tram that left us. He kept calling it a train and he is obsessed with trains. We saw the Khoalas first and he was not impressed. Mostly because of the smell. I thought it smelled wonderful, like eucolyptis, but he disagreed. We saw the Wallabes next and he loved those. He can even pronounce the word perfectly. I am very impressed with not only his vocabulary, but his anunciation. After that we went and saw the crocodiles and other various creatures in smaller cages along the way. He loved the elephants and got a "biology" lesson from some monkeys. He also got to see a gorilla "Wiggling his peanuts". I almost cried. It was hilarious. The gorilla was actually masturbating. I never in my life even thought of the concept of other animals masturbating. I don't know why. Now that I think about it makes perfect sense but it was hilarious. But what was even more amusing than that, was how tiny he was. He was no longer the average man's middle finger and no wider than their thumb. But HE was huge by comparison. *As a side note, Malakhai was distracted by the other gorillas for the most part. He saw when we first walked in. Laughed at the gorilla and then started looking at the other two.* We walked through the tunnel and he loved the bats there as well as the other monkeys. They were "So Cute and gorgeous". Next were the bears who were being lazy, but making funny faces while they napped and after that came MJ's favorite part, the reptile house. He was hilarious. I told him once about a snake that one of my science teacher's used to have named, Houdini. Houdini was a corn snake and when we passed by the corn snakes, I told him what they were and his eyes lit up and he looked at me and said, "Like Houdini!" I think he would have stood there for the next 20 minutes watching them if we had let him. He was enthralled. He really enjoyed the alligators and he loved the fish. My God how that child loved those fish. It was like he was in a candy store. And then I figured out why: "These are BIG fish Brandy. We need to catch some and eat them." He is hilarious. We went through the reptile house twice. Anyway, the bird incubation area had two baby flamingos. One was tiny. The other was only slightly larger and already precariously perched on one leg. At 3:30 we went to the Aviary to see the penguins get fed. I love penguins and watching him enjoy them so much was a blast. He ran back and forth like he was pretending to swim with them. He asked questions. When we first walked in I showed him which penguins were which. There are Rockhoppers, Gentoos and King Penguins. Later on, I asked him to show me what each one looked like again and he pointed both the gentoo and rockhopper penguins out perfectly, but got a little confused on the King Penguin. I think it was because the King Penguins weren't being very social and he couldn't really get a good look at them. Afterwards, we went and fed the Lorikeets. The Lorikeets are a kind of Parrot and the zoo basically gives you nectar and when you walk in the caged area with them, they swarm you. I expected MJ to freak and be scared, but he loved it. He didn't scream. He only tried to grab at one once, but when we corrected him and showed him how to get the bird to climb on his finger, he didn't do it again. Perfect. He was perfect. When we left for the day we rode the tram out and I thought MJ was going to have a cow. He loved that too. I know this long and to be honest I didn't really write it expecting anyone to read it all the way through. I wrote it for the memories, because right now we don't have an operating camera. For those of you who did read it all the way through I think you and I hope you enjoyed the tale of a sweet boy and his trip to the zoo.