The Bronx Zoo

Apparently in New York, you’re not supposed to look people in the eyes or smile. You keep walking forward and any accidental eye contact should be ignored. But this is on the streets, with the “real” New Yorkers. Once you reach the tourists, see your fellow kind and their slightly crazed puffy-eyes, a feeling swoops through you- like a sticky, sponging feeling that makes you a little bit happy for a short period of time but then makes you feel icky again. We went to the Bronx zoo today. The subway ride there consisted of a slow but constant dribble of people leaving our train cart, leaving many open seats for the forty five minute train ride. I went to the Cleveland Metropark Zoo during the winter with all of the animals in their much smaller habitats, the giraffes were confined in huge wooden rooms that were only huge vertically, not horizontally. They could move about, but couldn’t roam. This visit was much different because all of the animals were in their summer habitats- large and imitations of what their habitats might look like in the wild. Sarah commented about how weird it is that, in Cleveland we’ve been dodging deer every night, but in New York the only ones we’ve seen have been in the zoo. The varieties of deer from Asia have become main exhibitions in the Bronx zoo.