Zoo Day

At one of our weekly poker nights after returning from vacation and starting the new semester, two of the German teachers here this spring commented about the fun they had had at Changzhou's zoo. The seller was that one could buy live chickens and throw them to the lions. Needless to say, I quickly organized a trip to the zoo. Fellow teachers Sean, Sarah, Jordan, my college friend John (visiting from Thailand), Teddy-our advisor, Qin Chen (a friend that graduated last year), 真真 and I loaded up in the morning and with some tasty spring rolls made by 真真's mom, took the bus down to the southern edges of the city.

We were able to fortuitously go to the zoo on one of maybe two sunny days we got all April, so it was perfect. The first couple of exhibits we looked through weren't too inspiring. The cages were drab concrete cells, with maybe a log or two for the monkeys or big cats to play around in. Most of the big cats were sleeping, and there was an incredibly old, tired lion that inspired thoughts of Aslan. The real fun, and main reason we came to the zoo, happened when we boarded the zoo shuttle for a ride through the open areas. I was utterly shocked at the first stop, as llamas, and many types of deer walked right up to the shuttle. Vendors were standing by with bags of carrots or other veggies to feed the animals. As we moved through the rest of the outdoor areas, we went through an area with rams and deer (the little rams were hilariously chasing around all the baby deer), then lions, tigers, wolves and Asian brown bears. The real fun came when we got to the lions. In lieu of carrots, the vendor here sold bags of raw chicken, or for the big bucks (50 yuan) you could buy a live chicken. Sean is a man's man, so he did it without pause. The pure thrill of throwing a chicken to the lions was so great he repeated it at the tiger pit. It was pretty awesome to see the lions run down and grab the chicken out of mid-air, or in the small creek. The tigers were even more intense, with three of them fighting for the chicken. ZhenZhen and I threw some chicken pieces in, but I was unable to get a tiger to catch the piece mid air. The wolves were boring, and just kind of wandered up to the food thrown to them. The Asian bears were a riot, with three of them standing on a platform and standing up and waving for the food. It was clear that whey were quite used to this treatment, and there is no way they could ever go back to the wild after only having to stand up to get fed.

During the rest of the day we walked through more exhibits-mostly saw lots of birds, and walked among a bunch of peacocks-which decidedly do not like to be hand fed. We watched a horrible circus show that featured better acrobatics than any of the animal stunts. Let's just say that PETA probably isn't a big fan of monkeys wearing outfits while riding bicycles. The other big highlight, and something that Sarah went crazy for, was feeding giraffes. There is a platform set up so the giraffes only have to bend down a bit to eat. Purple and long, they would stick their tongues out to grab the carrot right out of our hands. It was absolutely fantastic to see them up close; although they were a bit testy-they did not want to be petted, just fed. At the end of the day we were able to catch the last ride of the day on the pirate ship ride that was part of a (very) mini-amusement park near the entrance. Oh, and in case you're wondering, kangaroos are very unimpressive if they're just sleeping and thus not bouncing around.