Day at the Zoo

Today we went to the San Diego Zoo, and it was as perfect a day as it could have been. The weather was glorious, just warm enough to be pleasant the whole day, cool enough to prevent misery that one usually feels in summer at the zoo as the day wears on.
It was also an education day for Koalas and other Australian animals, and we learned a lot. There was a terrific didgeredoo player from La Jolla who played a wonderful concert on instruments he created himself. There was even a huge long one made out of a century plant that played whale music, or what sounded like the song of a humpback whale, eerily enough to commemorate a whale that washed up on that very beach the day after the plant bloomed. The plant blooms only once a century, then dies. That's when Australians hollow out the plants and make instruments. Then they leave those instruments out there to weather naturally and go back to the earth. He carved another with his spirit animal, the dragon, and it was as gorgeous as an ancient Chinese carving and sounded glorious, as one would imagine a dragon would sound.
The gorillas got enrichment, produce pieces in burlap sacks, and all of them were appropriated by the silverback male, who allowed the females to watch him without ever offering even one sliver of melon or apple to them! One finally snuck up and stole a sack, which had a piece of melon in it. The male didn't pursue her or even seem to care at all. In fact, the females seemed very phlegmatic or perhaps stoic, staring off into space with a long-suffering look in their eyes. It was a glorious day, and I hope tomorrow will be great too, for those in Washington especially.