Animals at the Baltimore Zoo

It didn’t really take too long to figure out who the animals were at the Baltimore Zoo last Sunday. Sure, the zoo had the usual fare:  elephants, camels, giraffes and a bunch of different kinds of lemurs, monkeys, chimps, and such. But the real animals were the ones on the other side of the cages.

My wife Jackie and I wanted to spend more time with my nieces, nephew, grand-nieces and grand-nephews so off we went to Harrisburg, PA for a bit of weekend day tripping. The original plan was to meet at the Baltimore Zoo, which is now called The Maryland Zoo of Baltimore. But we continued to call it the Baltimore Zoo, because we didn’t think it deserved the additional hype of being a state zoo.

The best part of the day was watching my littlest family Ooooh and Ahhhhh at the fauna frolicking about in their paddocks. Sometimes we had a hard time spotting the critters, even when they were right in front of us. That natural camouflage did wonders. Of course, looking at the places they were hanging out helped us in locating them.. Some even found a bit of shade deep inside some man-made caves or dug out hollows of logs and faux trees.

But the best part, at least for me, was watching the animals on the outside of the cages. It started out simply enough with a passel full of prairie dogs right at the start. How many there were was too hard to count. They lay in the sun lolling about in bunches. A few seemed to be getting dust baths, splayed out with all arms and legs stretched out. That’s about when my nephew’s daughter Samantha spotted the babies.

I’m not totally sure how that whole baby animal thing works, but for some reason the smaller models of the older versions catch our attention. Their interactions, which are totally natural and should be expected of tiny tots, just seem to put us atwitter. We leaned over the barrier and tried to get the camera lens as close as possible. Then, as Sam leaned even closer to the edge, the camera turned toward her. Sure, the camera could have concentrated more on the cute little prairie dogs, but really if you have seen several dozen prairie dogs you’ve seen them all, and actually the looks on the kiddies’ faces mean much more in the long run.

Sam’s older brother Charles was the next animal on the list. We had to wait a bit for him to get involved, I think it took three minutes. It happened  in the goat encounter area. While I kept an eye on the Tyrannosaurus Rex paddock, the kiddies went about petting and playing with a host of wild-eyed and terror-filled goats. But petting them wasn’t enough for Charles. He quickly spotted a brush and started working on taking the knots out of one old goat’s fur. He made sure his sister, Sam, and cousin Olivia understood that he was the only one who was authorized to brush the goats. Sure, there were other” animals” in the pen brushing the goats, but most of them didn’t pay Charles any mind when he tried to assert his goat grooming powers.

Next on the list was a quick trip to see the polar bears. Now, you may ask yourself what in the world is a polar bear doing in Baltimore. And you would be right in asking that question, but the sad fact of the matter is that with all the global warming attacking the Earth, Baltimore is now the coolest spot in the world. So, when Olivia stepped up to the viewing window, she had her eye out for one of the furry white bruins. It didn’t take long to spot one, but it was pretty lazy. We thought that perhaps it was related to Baloo the bear from the Jungle Book. But this one was even lazier than Baloo, and he didn’t even sing or dance. Olivia didn’t seem to be as disappointed as I was; I mean I even tried to motivate the big white behemoth by singing the bear anthem, “The Bear Necessities.”

Everything was going just fine until I grabbed this guy’s lunch as a prop in my song and dance routine. Jackie tried to warn me, but I was so deep into my act her warnings fell on deaf ears. I might have been okay even at that, but all of a sudden I felt the need for a drink and  lo before me appeared a soft drink on a table. Still, a prop’s a prop, and I grabbed it up. This time, however, a park attendant saw me make my move. I’m still trying to figure out why the park person scolded my two victims for feeding the animal. Eh, oh well, we had fun at the zoo anyway.

There goes the Neighborhood

There are times when I like to sit back on my screen porch and watch the occasional boat or passing watercraft motor by on the Appomattox River below. There’s something sort of pristine to it, like a Norman Rockwell painting. It burns into your head like a negative, and you think life really doesn’t get much better than this.

Home, family, friends, and that “peaceful easy feeling” The Eagles sang about. That’s life in these United States, or at least that was life in these United States. But today, suddenly things are different. There’s a darker pallor to the clouds and the silver linings need some polish. Places that used to be safe are safe no more. And places where we used to be free to roam, now require a sceptic’s eye and a non-trusting soul.

There have been any number of hints. Bank robberies, store robberies, and stick ups started to crop up a few years ago with a bit of regularity that we never faced in this small, quiet burg we call Colonial Heights before. It started with a rumor here and there about people breaking into homes, and people assuming someone’s identity and then actually breaking into the house of the person whose identity they had stolen.

Sure it’s disconcerting. The bad things of city life that never seemed to work their way into this quiet town now seem to have found us, and with us they have found an easy victim. We are an insulated lot of people, we 17,500 souls who have invested our lives and livelihood in the community. But the community has changed. It’s a classic paradigm shift, like the end of the horse and buggy age.

So say bye-bye to our own version of Mayberry RFD. You won’t find Andy hanging around, and the lazy sleepy days of sitcom life are now long gone. When a snake finds its way into Eden, it’s time to pay attention.

Attention is exactly what the citizens of Colonial Heights need to be paying right now. There has been a sudden rash of evil in the community of late. In the past month, a pair of criminals waited outside a local bank for an easy target to walk by. They followed their victim to her home and then robbed her at gun point. A short time later, the same two bad guys pulled the same kind of crime again, this time a mere two blocks from where they robbed the woman. This time, the victim was shot.

Wake up Colonial Heights!

By good fortune, the police department had increased patrols in the area and they spotted the two speeding on their way out of the subdivision. The white hats (okay, so maybe blue hats) chased down the speeder, only to find out that the two were wanted for the robbery.

But it doesn’t end there. I was told there had been another armed robbery incident in the same subdivision since the two were arrested.

Scared yet? Then there’s this incident. Two young men in our church youth group left the meeting two weeks ago, stopped by a fast food restaurant for a quick snack, and then headed home on foot. On their way home someone pops up with a pistol and before you can say, Go Colonials, our guys are out their phones and Ipod, and wallets.

In the past, we have witnessed such actions in some of the areas around the state. In most cases, they were bigger cities, sporting higher crime rates, and other problems that seem to abound in larger cities. They never seemed to end up on our front steps. Metaphorically, we could point our fingers at the papers and say, ‘Look how bad things are over there.” We can’t say that anymore. We have to be a much more wary group. Predators are about, and like any group, we have to start paying more attention to our surroundings. What happens to your neighbor can certainly happen to us. And in such a small city like this, everyone is a neighbor. Neighborhood watch be darned, we need to start looking out for everyone who lives here. We need to get back to the sense of small town that is what made Colonial Heights the third best city to live in in Virginia.

The onus is upon us. Don’t wait for the Citizen’s Night Out, start paying attention to your streets now and do not fear calling the police. After all, who else will look out for us?