Part of our exciting day yesterday was going to the Cincinnati Zoo. A recent study of area attractions listed the zoo as one of the best deals. Normally it costs $6.50 to park and $11.50 per person to get in but we parked on the street for free then, to our surprise, there was no one manning the entrance so we walked into the zoo itself with our wallets still unscathed. No wonder it's such a good deal!

Besides a digital camera, Jim brought a digital audio recorder with him and I delivered a running commentary of things we saw. I've transcribed (with some minor editing) its contents below.

Hear the recording! Click here.

We went to "Gibbon Island" and thought we saw the monkeys doing something active but -- no -- they were just scratching themselves. How about that? Agile primates scratching themselves.
Jim: Just like watching a baseball game.

Oh, and we learned the difference between apes and monkeys. Apes don't have tails and they stand semi-erectly. Which can cause embarrassment in certain social situations.

The wetland wildlife exhibit included that rarest of species, the Anas platyrhynchos, also known as the mallard duck. How exotic! Now do you think the zoo had to go out and capture these things or did they think, 'well they're here, let's just make them part of the exhibit'?

That was what? A macaw? I think I saw his brother in a pet store.

The exhibit has been closed to ensure the privacy of first time parents. What about their privacy when they were mating?

Jim: Gazelles, the other white meat!
They look like Billy goats bred to go just a little bit faster. You know, to give the cheetahs a test.

And these are the red river hogs. And we're trying to figure out if these two butting heads are fighting each other or cleaning each other. This would be sumo wrestling if they were butting bellies. And we'll just ignore the river of urine behind the one that I think the other is trying to push him into, just for laughs.

What are these? The Japanese macaque? They've got red on their face and red on their butt. They go through what's called "red-nosing" to curry favor with the ones in charge.
Jim: That one reminds me of a girl I knew. She wanted macaque.

The snow leopard. Obviously a seasonal animal and we're here in June. So we came at the right time. He's up there doing what all cats do... snoozing. Oh, here's one doing what passes for cat action. He has his eyes open!

Hiding way up there. Maybe that's why we were able to sneak in free. They only charge you when you get to come in and see ANIMALS!

We're in the cathouse now. This is a fossa, “the largest and most powerful predator in Madagascar,” it says on a sign here. Now that's a distinction! I'm sure he's proud of those bragging rights. He looks like a cat, it says here, but he's actually a member of the mongoose family. We wonder if mongoose are anything like cats. And we also wonder what is the plural of mongoose? Is it mongeese? (Not according to my spellchecker, which suggests changing it to "mongooses.")

These are called pampas cats? They look like regular black cats. Did we come to the zoo or the local animal shelter? This is terribly exotic.

There's actually an exhibit of a cat called Geoffrey's Cat. "A solitary night stalker, Geoffrey's Cat is an agile climber, especially after Geoffrey goes to work and leaves the cat alone inside the house." We don't see him here, though, so we presume that Geoffrey has taken him back home.

How disappointing! We went through the whole cathouse. Didn't see one hooker.
Jim: Oy!

Kids went that way; we'll go this way, Jim says. By the way, you'll be glad to know I turned the recorder off when I went to the bathroom.

We're inside the nocturnal exhibit. A sign says "No flash, please." So tuck in your shirt.

I don't know if you can hear that noise -- that squeaking. I'm walking into this thinking there's some sort of exotic animal or something making the noise. No, in fact, it's just an overhead fan that badly needs oil.

Exactly where did barn owls live before there were barns? Thank goodness they put a shovel and a rake in there so the poor owl would recognize its habitat.

The common vampire bat. "Yes they eat only fresh blood," the sign says. "They make a shallow bite with sharp, tiny teeth and then lick the wound to keep it bleeding." Or they eat it out of the bowls full of blood provided by the zookeepers.

A display about endangered animals shows a pair of shoes made from cat hair. Cat hair belongs on cats. And on the furniture they rub against when they're shedding. You know, maybe instead of killing and animal for its skin, they could just keep it an apartment that has carpet. And than after it sheds they could just vacuum and get the hair from that. I'm sure you'd get plenty of cat hair.

What are these called? Colobus monkey? Or, as we say, since it's black and white and stink, the skunk monkey.
Jim: Is that a group?
The skunk monkeys? It could be.

I need to make him say this. We come to the Southern Brazilian Ocelot cage. And he says what?
Jim: That's an ocelot of space for such a small animal. Oh!

After the zoo we drove to the station to park then walked to Fountain Square, one of the landmarks of Cincinnati’s downtown. We ate outside at a place called the Rockbottom Brewery. The waitress blamed her slow service on the fact that she was the only one working the patio but after we ordered a root beer and a water to drink, we knew she’d hustle for people buying real drinks.

The Reds and Cubs played at Cincinnati’s new Great American Ball Park. That’s a good corporate name for a park since unless you know that there’s a company named Great American Insurance (owned by the team’s owner), you don’t even know it’s a corporate name.

It was Sammy Sosa’s first game back after sitting out seven games for corking his bat and I don’t want to say that as walkup customers 30 minutes before game time that we had bad seats but we were so far up that we didn’t need an usher to help us find our seats, we needed a sherpa!

We sat in section 537, Row V. That's the very last section down the right field line in the uppermost row of the stadium. We had a better view of the Ohio River than we did of the game but Jim said he only wanted to see the spectacle. If only we had brought our spectacles, we might have been able to do it.

I did flick a peanut shell that I believe landed in Kentucky. Tickets cost five bucks each. What did we want?

"Cold beer! The more you drink the better you'll feel!" yelled a vendor. Nobody scored through the first three innings and the only intrigue was whether people would throw cork onto the field when Sosa came to bat. People booed heartily but kept their cork to themselves.

In the fourth inning, Sosa uncorked a home run to straightaway center field to drive in two runs. Meanwhile, the Reds couldn’t so much as sniff first base against the Cubs’ pitcher Kerry Wood. I remembered that the last time I paid to see a baseball game, Sosa hit a home run and Wood was the winning pitcher as the Cubs beat Pittsburgh at Wrigley Field in 1998.

Déjà vu all over again, as someone once said.

Jim was ready to leave by the fifth inning but the Reds still had not gotten a hit yet. “We’re not walking out on a no-hitter,” I told him. In the sixth, a pinch hitter finally smacked a clean single to center and we were free to leave.

What exciting cats are we?

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