Baby Monkeys and Wrestling Bears

It was another good zoo day. Not too sunny and warm. Before we left the school, at least three people asked where we were going. When Michael responded, "The zoo," they all said, "Again!" Obviously they forget how little of the zoo you can see in one afternoon with a three year old. We'll need at least five trips before we get to everything.

When I asked Michael what he wanted to see, he just said, "monkeys," so I decided to stay in the areas closest to the entrance/exit where the Taiwan wild and domestic animals are. We found the monkeys fairly quickly (they were actually macaques). In addition to the dozen or so adults who were just lazing around like usual, there were six or seven babies (big babies, but they were still cute) who were all fighting over bits of shiny paper and running and climbing all around.

They were still learning how to climb and swing around and occasionally one would fall from quite high up and there was always a collective gasp from the human onlookers. But, they always got back up (without crying - how do mommy monkeys manage that?) and were running around like crazy within a few seconds.

Michael actually sat on the railing and watched them for at least fifteen minutes. I didn't know whether or not to be more amazed at that, or the monkeys.

A little ways further were three sun bears (Taiwanese black bears). One was behaving like the bears always do when I've seen them at the zoo (namely sleeping in a place where it's difficult to see them), but the other two were wrestling all over the place. I was fascinated (so fascinated, I forgot to take a picture), but I guess they weren't as interesting as baby monkeys because Michael wanted to go after thirty seconds. Luckily, mommies have veto rights and we stayed at least five minutes. They were biting each other and knocking each other over, but they're so big that everything seemed to be done in slow motion.

On the way to the domestic animals area, I got a phone call from my school requesting that I return later to sub for the Grade 3 class. I wouldn't need to be back for another couple of hours, so I said fine.

We went through the domestic animals pretty quickly as Michael wasn't very interested (as you can tell from the picture). Here he is with some domestic ducks. Are they not one of the ugliest animals you have ever seen? No wonder they're always killing them for food. You can buy duck everywhere here. It's probably just as common as chicken.

Then we bought an ice cream cone (of course) and returned to school. Michael likes playing with the big Kindergarten kids in the after school program, so he didn't mind.