After leaving the Hubbard Gorilla Valley complex at the
Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, I became cognizant of the time and the fact that my
traveling companion was beginning to flag. So we made a plan to go over to the zoo's little train
feature and ride it out to the far end of the zoo where their larger African
animals were. I imaged the my
friend Rod would appreciate pics of and from the train, too. Then we could make our way back to the
entrance picking up other areas as we went. It seemed to make sense at the time. But here's how it went down. The walk to the train was short enough
and we joined the line awaiting the next train. It took about 10 minutes to arrive, and then another 10 to
unload and load, at which point we ended up still in line, but only about 10
people from the beginning for the next train. 25 minutes later, it arrived and was unloaded and loaded in
about 5 minutes this time. Once it
was loaded the intercom announced that the train was being pulled out of
service due to a technical problem!
WTF? So our time-saver
ended up using up about an hour of our time... However, the standing and waiting had also been a good break
for my friend.
We consulted the map and decided to hoof it to the far and
maintain our earlier "work our way back to the front gate"
strategy. I realized that we would
probably not get to the large Asian cats (Tigers and Leopards) or the separate
Penguin facility, the Farm area with international farm animals was out, and
because viewing the One-horned Asian Rhinoceros was only possible from the
train... ta ta to that, too. All
very disappointing, and yet in the context of everything we'd already seen it
would be hard to claim to sour grapes!
The Ring-tailed Lemur, Lemur catta, which is the most
commonly held mammal in North American Zoos.
No comments:
Post a Comment