We went on a family field trip yesterday evening to the Oakland Zoo, and it was fantastic. My parents are members of that zoo, and they invited us to go to an after-hours event there. If you ever have the chance to do something like this, do it! The animals are so much more active an alert in the evening, and there were all sorts of docents and zookeepers around to answer questions. We got to see some very active siamangs, chimps and birds, but I think the highlight for me was watching the giraffes. We actually got to see them run, and they are spectacular! They look like they are hardly even moving, but yet they cover so much ground in almost no time at all. They have a young giraffe there, and two of the adult giraffes appeared to be trying to get the youngster to go behind the fence. The giraffes looked like they were trying to herd the little one in, but all the little one would do was run a bit then stop and watch the older ones. The older ones then started a trick that looked like something we’d do with our cocker spaniel when she’d get out and start running away… they would get the baby’s attention then start running away from it, and the baby would start to chase the adult. Then the adult would loop back around toward the gate, but then the baby would reach a point and stop following. The adult would go through the gate, then poke its head out a few moments later to look at the baby. Then the adult would do it again - sometimes just the one adult, and sometimes two of them. It was beautiful, amazing, and hilarious!

We also had a really interesting discussion with an elephant keeper. I told him about something that had happened to me at the zoo a few months ago, where I was standing and swaying with Gregory in the sling and then I looked up and saw that one of the elephants was swaying right in time with me. I thought this was really neat, but the zookeeper said this was actually neurotic behavior in an elephant. It is not something they do in the wild, only in captivity, and they seem to do it to relieve stress. He said that at most zoos, elephants spend an average of 30% of their total day in neurotic behaviors such as these, but that the elephants at the Oakland Zoo only spend about 2% of their time doing these things. All of their elephants come from other zoos where they were not kept in particularly good conditions, so they brought these behaviors with them. For example, one of the elephants was at a zoo where all he would do was stick his head between the bars of his feeding trough and sway. He doesn’t do it at all now, but it took several years before he stopped completely. They’ve been able to drastically reduce the amount of time spent in these behaviors by giving them lots of room to roam, lots of stimulation through toys and a changing environment, and frequent (11 times a day!) feedings. He said that for five nights a month, every month, the elephant keepers camp out in the tall trees and watch the elephants when no one else is around. They want to see what they do when the elephants think they are alone, and make sure they are not falling into these behaviors at night. They have an amazing dedication to these animals, and it was really neat to hear about how they are trying to hard to learn about the elephants and take such good care of them.

OK, enough blogging and time to do some work on the kitchen! I hope you all have a lovely day!