The Zoo In February

I had lunch with my former Tattered Cover Bookstore office-mate Peter this past Friday afternoon, and since I was so close, decided to visit the Denver Zoo afterwards, while Peter had to head back to work.  I won't rub it in, of course.  I am, after all, an official retiree, and get to do these type of things while the rest of the world has to work.  In any case, my first stop was to check out the lions, who were all excited about the feeding of the African Wild Dogs, as seen in the photograph on the left.  There was some sort of talk being given, and these dogs were each given bones to chew.  They are located n the compound right next to the lions.  The lions were so interested that I thought that the next part of the presentation would be feeding the wild dogs to the lions, but no such luck.

In any case, I took some photographs of the lions, all 4 of them both male and siblings, who came to the zoo as teenagers (by which I mean not cubs but not adults, either) a few years ago. It is only recently that these lions have grown manes, and have begun to look like adult lions.  They all seem to get together well, but there might be a fly in the ointment coming to paradise.  The Denver Zoo last month acquired a new male lion named Tobias, who has been selected to mate with one of the zoo's female lions.  And just what is wrong, Denver Zoo Officials, with the four brothers?  It reminds me a lot of high school, but let's not go there.  And in point of fact, I had no idea that the Denver Zoo even had female lions.  I have never seen one of them until this past Friday.  I took photographs of the male lions when I first arrived, such as the one in the photograph on the right, but when I was leaving, the 4 males had been replaced by 3 females.

All three of the females had been given bones to chew on, and were not very interested in having their photograph taken.  I was lucky enough to take a photograph of one of them actually looking at me, as seen in the photograph on the left.  What I want to know is why they can't have the 4 male brothers, the new male lion Tobias, and the 3 females all together in the compound at the same time.  Now that would be a photo opportunity. Throw a new young intern into the compound to enforce some order, and you have some good entertainment for zoo visitors.  I will suggest this to zoo officials immediately.