February At The Zoo Part II - Visiting Friends Both Old And New

As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, I went to the Denver Zoo Wednesday afternoon, and wound up taking photographs of animal subjects both old and new. I find that I take a lot of photographs of the lions, but that is because they all seem willing to look me in the eye and let me take their portrait. I am not sure if that is because they like me, are wary of me and therefore on alert, or thinking of me in terms of dinner. This past Wednesday, the four bachelor lions, one of which can be seen in the photo on the left,  were roaming Predator Ridge, the main lion compound. It has been quite a while since I have seen the other pride, a family headed by male lion Tobias and which includes Tatu, born in 2019, and two lion cubs - Oskar and Araali - born just last year. I suspect they are being kept at the house of a zoo employee, one with a very big backyard, until the pandemic is over.

I know it might seem boring to feature these lions all the time, but on the other hand, there are only so many interesting photographs of Wild Somali Asses and mountain goats that you can take. Which is why I am also featuring the photo of another bachelor lion, seen in the photo on the right. These four lions were brought to the zoo as teenagers, before they had manes, and as I recall, were much more lively back then. As I have said many times before, the zoo needs to get an intern to go into the compound and prod these lions with a stick, in order to get them moving around a bit. It would make for livelier photographs and also be much healthier for the lions, if not for the intern.

Without question, the most soulful looking animals in the zoo are the monkeys. You look into their eyes and can see deep emotion. Whether that is because they are thinking about their sad fate, imprisoned for life, or if they are simply wondering when dinner will be served, I don't know. I took the photograph of the monkey on the left on my way to the Great Ape House, and failed to note what kind it was, and from where. I must say, however, that it is very colorful indeed, which is, of course, the most important thing. 

I believe the photograph on the right is of a female mandrill, perhaps the mother of Kesi, the 2 year old ball of energy that I featured on this blog yesterday. I think she came over to the window of the compound to get a little sympathy from zoo visitors, bitter about the fact that "a man can work from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done." The male mandrill, Kesi's father, never seems to bother himself with helping to raise their child, which I am sure bothers this female mandrill to no end. I strongly recommend that she have a heart to heart with her better half ASAP.