Da zoo!

Went to the Toronoto zoo today!

Many cool beasties. Many more were, of course, off exhibit owing to it being bloody cold, but it was still awesome. Tentacled snakes! An adorable beaver! Lynxes looking like hoary shamanic housecats! Gaur! Bison! Sloths! (Oh god, the sloths. I wanted to cuddle and wuggle them. They curled up into shaggy little balls and tucked their freaky little wrists into their laps and it was slowly. painfully adorable.) And a number of very cool birds that I would give my eyeteeth to see in the wild–but we saw wild trumpeter swans and American black ducks! Birding has been accomplished!

Sure, it was -25 with the windchill, but pfff. I’m from Minnesota! I have long underwear and scarves and stuff! I am invincible!

And in fact, I was just fine at the zoo, while I was hiking around…you call that a steep hill!? In my day we hiked steeper hills to get to the bathroom, and it was uphill both ways! And the cougars weren’t in cages! And you had to make your own toilet paper out of bear pelts!…ahem, sorry…Anyway, it was the ride back that everything froze, once the blood stopped pumping. But I have peppermint tea and internet and am going to spend a pleasant evening being stuffed on sirloin and roasted turnips* and then perhaps curling up with a good book–I am on vacation, damnit!–and all will be right with the cosmos.

*Astonishingly tasty. I had never actually EATEN one, although I paint many.

Leave a Reply