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Avery turned 7 months old (seven months!), which we figure makes her old enough for the zoo, if not old enough for a safari, where she would frequently be mistaken for lunch. No, the Bronx Zoo is about the right speed for us at the moment, sans gangland cache.

We started with birds. Lots of birds. Have you noticed how many birds there are in zoos? Lots. I think it might be because of how relatively easy they are to display. In a nice big cage they can stretch their wings a bit, but you can still get close enough to get a good look. They’ll let you, because a lumbering flightless giant like you is pretty far down the list of stuff to worry about today.

Lots of birds. Avery wasn’t terribly interested, though at some point a classmate will probably come across the word aviary and try to say she’s full of birds or something. This is a thing parents think about when they name kids. This parent, anyway. Currently, however, birds are not a big priority in her world. Even that bald eagle who looks like he’s laughing his head off.

So we looked for more interesting fare. The sea lions were happy to oblige us, happy being a relative term. When we found them they were enduring the shrieking of a kid demanding that they wake up. I wonder if that happens often? At any rate, they swam a few laps for us. And even though Avery was still dozy from yet another nap, she was intrigued enough by the giant swimming Thomases to want to hang out for a bit. That was fun. Then we got serious:

Rhinos are frickin big. If one decided he wanted your seat on the bus, you would give it to him. Like, without even hesitating. No stealthy comparing of chest size or anything. Just, here you go, sir. And may I say your horn is looking especially pointy today. Avery didn’t notice. The flowers on the shrub next to her were way more interesting. The baboons stood a good chance of making the grade, but by then she was seriously hungry, and while I took pictures, they took a pitstop. She didn’t miss much – the wind was pretty cold at that point, and the baboons moseyed for cover.

Although, I just assumed it was the wind. They might have been intimidated out by those shifty looking teen giraffe hoodlums. Look at them. Just lurking. Looking all shifty. And hoodlumish. After the tank was topped up, we moved on. Did not need any of that.

And somehow we found ourselves back on the west coast. With totem poles and bears!

Oh you didn’t believe me. Yeah, the bears. Now we had Avery’s attention. Well, the bears had her attention. Giant Thomas! Want to pet! It will love me as I love it! Yes, you could say the bears were definitely the highlight of the excursion for this little girl. And just around the corner was one of the low points for daddy. That polar bear was just about the sorriest sack of bear you ever saw. Look up mope in the dictionary, and there he is. All droopy and sad. He hauled himself up and dragged himself over to the door through which they must feed him, and he just paced around it endlessly. Such is his life, I think. Nice metaphor for the Incredible Melting World (hoorah!) of his wild northern brethren.

I needed a bit of an uptick, so we thought we’d check out the snow leopard and the lion.

Sad snow leopard. Sad lion. The problem with zoos has always been their necessary evil. Animals belong in their native habitat, free to range and be wild. But if they’re out there, we don’t see them. And if we don’t see them, we shoulder into their world and build houses and streets and gas stations and utterly destroy any chance they have to survive. So zoos serve as the very best way to keep animals on our collective mind. Children get to see them, and they think about them with an entirely appropriate sense of wonder. Some of those kids grow up and take action to protect them. And the human encroachment is maybe not quite so murderous as it was a generation ago. So I remind myself to be positive, to share in Avery’s wonder. We got to see lions and bears and rhinos and a whole lot of birds. And with our help she will grow up knowing where her food comes from, the ecosystem we all depend on, and how she can do her part to protect and preserve the planet. So maybe one day we can travel (gently) into the wild and see some of these animals out there where they’re still happy. Thank you, zoo critters. For taking a really big one for the team.

Despite the heavy tone at the end there, we had a terrific last day with Gramma before she headed back to Vancouver. It was a much appreciated contrast to the news about the bombing at the Boston Marathon. As of this writing, the FBI has released an assembled video clip of their two suspects. Someone is going to ID these people, and maybe we will get some answers. That in itself is good news against the Senate’s abysmal failure to pass common sense gun law. These are trying times. You have to remind yourself that the times have always been trying. Remember the so-called Tylenol murders in 1982, or the October Crisis in 1970. There has always been a fringe element that violently resists the status quo. There probably always will be. It falls to each generation to renew its commitment to peace, to take us one step further from a culture of violence and toward a culture of understanding. Guns kill people. So far as I know, ears never have.