Mid-Winter At The Zoo

I went to the Denver Zoo yesterday afternoon to take a few photographs. It was 60 degrees and sunny, and so I guessed that all the animals would be outside in the sun, instead of lurking in the shadows, and I was right. The monkey in the photograph on the left was clinging to the side of it's cage, directly in front of me, and quite willing to have it's portrait taken.

I feel that I have some kind of special rapport with these animals. I was trying hard to take a photograph of the new orangutan baby, and as you can see from the photograph on the right of it's mother, she looked perfectly fine with that, although the entire time I was there - which was a while - she covered up the baby with it's arms, blocking a good shot. This is where zoo interns need to step up, go into the compound, and persuade the mother to hold that baby up to zoo visitors. Which they currently don't do, which is a bummer. After all, why not? Those orangutans seem to be very gentle and friendly creatures.

I think the animal in the photograph on the left is Chlojo, an endangered Sumatran tiger that comes from the Nashville Zoo. But this is only a guess.  If I am right, I believe this particular tiger is known to go berserk when it hears country music. And at the Nashville Zoo, they must play it throughout the grounds from loudspeakers cranked up to full volume. It was recommended that Chlojo be transferred to Denver, where John Denver's Rocky Mountain High plays softly 24/7 in the tiger house.

The photograph on the right is of one of the Denver Zoo's hyenas, who yesterday were wandering around Predator Ridge, which is where I expected to see the four bachelor lions. I am not sure why they weren't there. Were these hyenas put there as food for those lions? Have donations dropped so low that the zoo is throwing less popular animals to the wolves (or in this case, lions) to save money? And where are the bachelor lions? Could living the good life here in Denver have made them soft, and they are actually afraid of these hyenas? Questions and more questions, but not an answer in sight.