Tag Archives: zoo

Happy Asian Elephant Day!

Today is Asian Elephant Day at the zoo. It’s Ambika’s 60th birthday and she really wants to celebrate with you, so don’t disappoint her.

Representatives from the Sri Lankan embassy will be on hand, and Sri Lankan dancers will perform traditional dances every half hour between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Shanthi, Kandula’s mother, was born in Sri Lanka. Elephants are an important part of Sri Lankan culture, though fewer than 5,000 Asian elephants remain in the wild in Sri Lanka.

Husband is thrilled that we’re getting up early to go to a donor’s breakfast and tour of the planned Elephant Trails area. Husband loves getting up early. (We aren’t climbing a fence or anything, we were invited). I wasn’t well enough to attend Brew at the Zoo (which benefitted the elephants), but this more than makes up for it.

Only at the Washington National Zoo

A little girl who couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6 years old, after looking at the Tigers: “I want them to be in the wild and have healthcare and food.”

What kid uses the word healthcare? Besides that one. It was spooky.

I guess she could have seen Madagascar a few too many times, but she weirded us out because she sounded like a miniature policy wonk, not like a kid repeating something she’d heard in a movie or heard an adult say.

this is probably species-ist of us

But Husband and I think that they should have let the cheetahs keep the deer.

A deer got into the cheetah yard at the National Zoo yesterday and was pounced on by a mother cheetah before the deer escaped into Rock Creek Park, according to a witness and a zoo spokeswoman.

The young buck appeared in the largest cheetah yard shortly after 7 a.m. It bolted from a pond there and was chased by the mother cheetah and her four cubs, according to a witness. The mother cheetah jumped on the buck, and it ran back to the pond.

Admit it, cheetahs are way, way cooler than deer. I’d have said that even before last night, when a deer decided to try and kill itself on the hood of Husband’s car. In the same place a deer once flung itself onto the hood of my car, although that was some years ago. Still, a bit of a coincidence.

Husband is fine, the car is a loss. The damned deer got up and ran off.