She didn’t have a phone. In order to find each other easily, we decided to meet at the northwestern corner of the Bean at Millennium Park.
I told her: “I will have a white carnation pinned to my lapel and be carrying a back issue of the Wall Street Journal. Ask me this question: ‘What is a unicorn?’ My answer will be: ‘A unicorn is just a horse with a long—ay vey!’ Make sure that they don’t follow you.”
She replied: “Roger that Betty Boop. Look for a juvenile delinquent in a green shirt. Ask, 'Aasman mein kitne taare hain?' If you hear, 'Hum sab tumhare hain,' start jogging in the north westerly direction. Stop near the Inn of the Frantic Frog. I'll see you there.”
It was a nasty day to meet someone at a house of ill repute like the Frantic Frog Inn. Storm clouds hung ominously overhead, darkening the sky so much that at 10:30 a.m., it looked like it was 7:00 p.m.
There was a mixed crowd on the train. While getting down at Union Station, I made eye contact with a muscular man in a sleeveless red T-shirt, torn jeans, dread locks, and a skate board. I met him again at the Adams street entrance, trying to buy weed from a similarly dressed group.
I set out on the rain lashed street, holding on to my fragile umbrella which the wind was doing its best to rip off my hand, toting my bags and sipping on a Jamba Juice smoothie. There were but a few abroad. I walked a couple of blocks but the rain and wind made it a difficult task. I ducked under the entrance of a city parking lot. The man from the bus shelter across the street eyed me curiously. I ignored him and jumped on a ledge on the wall and sat there.
The man with dread locks and probably with freshly acquired weed walked past with another man. Our eyes met again. I watched his figure recede from my view. What wicked things were afoot this miserable morn?
I waited on my perch for some time, while the rain’s intensity went in a sinusoidal pattern. In one of the troughs, I dashed out again only to duck back again through a revolving doors of a bookshop called Books-a-Million. There of course were not a million books. But whatever they had seemed to be on sale.
I picked up a novel tracing the history of New York. As I grow older, my book picking criteria have become increasingly peculiar. While the back cover draws me to the content, the first paragraph is the acid test. If it doesn’t interest me, then my interest never revives. I am shallow—I put form ahead of content. This book started with a short sentence of five words. The first page continued with a first person account of a Dutchman canoeing up the Hudson with his half-Indian daughter born in sin on a blustery day not unlike the one outside, but some 300 years ago. My interest was piqued.
I walked on to Michigan Avenue to see that the tops of buildings such as Aon building and Prudential Plaza lost in the low hanging clouds, even though it had stopped raining. It was a remarkable sight. I sprinted across the street to enter Millennium Park. The famous fountain was not as crowded as it usually is on summer days, but a few hardy souls were still braving it out.
I strolled over to the Bean. The Artful Dodger in green was there. We spoke the code words and ran like hell in the northwesterly direction. We then caught a taxi to go to Lincoln Park zoo.
This 35-acre free zoo was founded in 1868 making it the oldest in the nation. It allegedly started when the park commissioners were gifted a pair of swans! Tripadvisor rates it 14 in a list of 527 places to visit in Chicago.
It is indubitably pretty and has an old world feel, despite all the refurbishment it allegedly had recently. The principal exhibits and the first to greet you are the lions and tiger. The lioness was very restless last, pacing up and down and vocalizing from time to time. The lion slept majestically on a rock of course. Are you sure the lion is just effortlessly good looking and doesn’t go out of its way to look picturesque even while sleeping?
After some 10 minutes of pacing, the lioness saw me. Our eyes met. She became very still, with not a muscle moving. She stared at me with an unfathomable expression and held on unblinkingly for a long 5 – 7 minutes. Did she see in me a fatted cow that she could feast on? Did I resemble one of the zoo keepers? Did we have a connection from a previous birth? It was bizarre.
T was in splits of course—she kept pointing to me, denying her involvement, and giving the lioness encouragement with thumbs up sign. With friends like this…!
The tiger was equally restless. He looked a little thin for a Bengal tiger (I’m an expert after rubbing shoulders with them in the wild at Kanha, you see.) Perhaps he was just working his bowels, because he peed with a very sheepish expression after a while, which we unashamedly captured on camera.
This kind of started a pattern that morning. All the primates we saw after that took a dump ceremoniously in front of us. Like the silver backed Gorillas.
By the way, the Gorilla enclosure is the best feature of the zoo. Lincoln zoo has been able to breed them successfully in captivity. Now there is a nice family of Gorillas there—Jojo, the patriarch, his mate, their son Azizi and two daughters. Jojo takes his responsibility very seriously and constantly watched his kids and petted them. The girls were playful. One girl teased another by extending a long twig to her. When the other tried to grab it, she took it away and they chased each other. It was totally cute to watch.
Did you know that monkeys and apes are divided into old world and new world? Old world monkeys live in Asia and Africa, belong to one family of Cercopithecidae and are closer to humans and apes. New World monkeys live in Mexico and South America and belong to the super family of platyrhines (flat nosed). There are several differences between the two in size, diet, physical attributes and mating habits.
Here’s the most fascinating trivia: apparently, the monkey family split into two 40 million years ago, and the new world monkeys might have migrated to South America on rafts of vegetation (like a storm broken piece of mangrove forest) across the Atlantic ocean! Scientists made these discoveries during the mapping of the human genome. How cool is that!
Whatever it is, I saw the curiosest types of new world monkeys, which I haven’t even heard of before. Like the Marmoset that are the smallest monkeys in the world. They were tiny, with a wizened face like that of an old man. Like most of the other new world monkeys, they form monogamous pair bonds. I saw another species, where the two lovebirds sat in deep embrace with their tails wound together. It was the sweetest of sights.
The reptile house was disappointing—the Thirvananthapuram zoo used to have a much better collection of snakes. We saw a couple of tortoises mating, which reminded me of the evergreen Ogden Nash poem:
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.
And the Alpacas we saw put Captain Haddock strongly in mind. Remember Prisoners of the Sun, where the Captain goes “Kilikilikili” on a Lama which spits on his face? Then we saw a Tibetan Takir (I hope I got the name right) who stood in such a dramatic pose that it put a Telugu film hero in mind.
T and I had a lively discussion on how to ride a double humped Bactrian camel and wondered how uncomfortable it must be if the camel decided to move the muscles in its humps. The poor creatures were huddled in the shelter—the early Fall-ish day must have been a tad cold for them. We tried to get them come out in the name of Genghis Khan, but to no avail.
The oddest creature we saw was without contest the Cavy. Apparently, they are rodents and include the guinea pig in their ranks. The one we saw was a creature that looked like the size of a Chital deer, with a rabbit face and thin, spindly legs.
We ended the day with a ramble along the brand new nature boardwalk. We didn’t see much of life on such a gloomy day except for a duck trio which chattered and followed T everywhere she went. What is it with the zoo and strange animal encounters?
The book I spoke about a few paragraphs before? Well, I left it behind in the park, along with my brand new umbrella and sunglasses. Now I will never know what happened to the Dutchman and his illegitimate daughter. Bah!
Anyway, you can see all my pictures here.
I told her: “I will have a white carnation pinned to my lapel and be carrying a back issue of the Wall Street Journal. Ask me this question: ‘What is a unicorn?’ My answer will be: ‘A unicorn is just a horse with a long—ay vey!’ Make sure that they don’t follow you.”
She replied: “Roger that Betty Boop. Look for a juvenile delinquent in a green shirt. Ask, 'Aasman mein kitne taare hain?' If you hear, 'Hum sab tumhare hain,' start jogging in the north westerly direction. Stop near the Inn of the Frantic Frog. I'll see you there.”
It was a nasty day to meet someone at a house of ill repute like the Frantic Frog Inn. Storm clouds hung ominously overhead, darkening the sky so much that at 10:30 a.m., it looked like it was 7:00 p.m.
There was a mixed crowd on the train. While getting down at Union Station, I made eye contact with a muscular man in a sleeveless red T-shirt, torn jeans, dread locks, and a skate board. I met him again at the Adams street entrance, trying to buy weed from a similarly dressed group.
I set out on the rain lashed street, holding on to my fragile umbrella which the wind was doing its best to rip off my hand, toting my bags and sipping on a Jamba Juice smoothie. There were but a few abroad. I walked a couple of blocks but the rain and wind made it a difficult task. I ducked under the entrance of a city parking lot. The man from the bus shelter across the street eyed me curiously. I ignored him and jumped on a ledge on the wall and sat there.
The man with dread locks and probably with freshly acquired weed walked past with another man. Our eyes met again. I watched his figure recede from my view. What wicked things were afoot this miserable morn?
I waited on my perch for some time, while the rain’s intensity went in a sinusoidal pattern. In one of the troughs, I dashed out again only to duck back again through a revolving doors of a bookshop called Books-a-Million. There of course were not a million books. But whatever they had seemed to be on sale.
I picked up a novel tracing the history of New York. As I grow older, my book picking criteria have become increasingly peculiar. While the back cover draws me to the content, the first paragraph is the acid test. If it doesn’t interest me, then my interest never revives. I am shallow—I put form ahead of content. This book started with a short sentence of five words. The first page continued with a first person account of a Dutchman canoeing up the Hudson with his half-Indian daughter born in sin on a blustery day not unlike the one outside, but some 300 years ago. My interest was piqued.
I walked on to Michigan Avenue to see that the tops of buildings such as Aon building and Prudential Plaza lost in the low hanging clouds, even though it had stopped raining. It was a remarkable sight. I sprinted across the street to enter Millennium Park. The famous fountain was not as crowded as it usually is on summer days, but a few hardy souls were still braving it out.
I strolled over to the Bean. The Artful Dodger in green was there. We spoke the code words and ran like hell in the northwesterly direction. We then caught a taxi to go to Lincoln Park zoo.
This 35-acre free zoo was founded in 1868 making it the oldest in the nation. It allegedly started when the park commissioners were gifted a pair of swans! Tripadvisor rates it 14 in a list of 527 places to visit in Chicago.
It is indubitably pretty and has an old world feel, despite all the refurbishment it allegedly had recently. The principal exhibits and the first to greet you are the lions and tiger. The lioness was very restless last, pacing up and down and vocalizing from time to time. The lion slept majestically on a rock of course. Are you sure the lion is just effortlessly good looking and doesn’t go out of its way to look picturesque even while sleeping?
After some 10 minutes of pacing, the lioness saw me. Our eyes met. She became very still, with not a muscle moving. She stared at me with an unfathomable expression and held on unblinkingly for a long 5 – 7 minutes. Did she see in me a fatted cow that she could feast on? Did I resemble one of the zoo keepers? Did we have a connection from a previous birth? It was bizarre.
T was in splits of course—she kept pointing to me, denying her involvement, and giving the lioness encouragement with thumbs up sign. With friends like this…!
The tiger was equally restless. He looked a little thin for a Bengal tiger (I’m an expert after rubbing shoulders with them in the wild at Kanha, you see.) Perhaps he was just working his bowels, because he peed with a very sheepish expression after a while, which we unashamedly captured on camera.
This kind of started a pattern that morning. All the primates we saw after that took a dump ceremoniously in front of us. Like the silver backed Gorillas.
By the way, the Gorilla enclosure is the best feature of the zoo. Lincoln zoo has been able to breed them successfully in captivity. Now there is a nice family of Gorillas there—Jojo, the patriarch, his mate, their son Azizi and two daughters. Jojo takes his responsibility very seriously and constantly watched his kids and petted them. The girls were playful. One girl teased another by extending a long twig to her. When the other tried to grab it, she took it away and they chased each other. It was totally cute to watch.
Did you know that monkeys and apes are divided into old world and new world? Old world monkeys live in Asia and Africa, belong to one family of Cercopithecidae and are closer to humans and apes. New World monkeys live in Mexico and South America and belong to the super family of platyrhines (flat nosed). There are several differences between the two in size, diet, physical attributes and mating habits.
Here’s the most fascinating trivia: apparently, the monkey family split into two 40 million years ago, and the new world monkeys might have migrated to South America on rafts of vegetation (like a storm broken piece of mangrove forest) across the Atlantic ocean! Scientists made these discoveries during the mapping of the human genome. How cool is that!
Whatever it is, I saw the curiosest types of new world monkeys, which I haven’t even heard of before. Like the Marmoset that are the smallest monkeys in the world. They were tiny, with a wizened face like that of an old man. Like most of the other new world monkeys, they form monogamous pair bonds. I saw another species, where the two lovebirds sat in deep embrace with their tails wound together. It was the sweetest of sights.
The reptile house was disappointing—the Thirvananthapuram zoo used to have a much better collection of snakes. We saw a couple of tortoises mating, which reminded me of the evergreen Ogden Nash poem:
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.
And the Alpacas we saw put Captain Haddock strongly in mind. Remember Prisoners of the Sun, where the Captain goes “Kilikilikili” on a Lama which spits on his face? Then we saw a Tibetan Takir (I hope I got the name right) who stood in such a dramatic pose that it put a Telugu film hero in mind.
T and I had a lively discussion on how to ride a double humped Bactrian camel and wondered how uncomfortable it must be if the camel decided to move the muscles in its humps. The poor creatures were huddled in the shelter—the early Fall-ish day must have been a tad cold for them. We tried to get them come out in the name of Genghis Khan, but to no avail.
The oddest creature we saw was without contest the Cavy. Apparently, they are rodents and include the guinea pig in their ranks. The one we saw was a creature that looked like the size of a Chital deer, with a rabbit face and thin, spindly legs.
We ended the day with a ramble along the brand new nature boardwalk. We didn’t see much of life on such a gloomy day except for a duck trio which chattered and followed T everywhere she went. What is it with the zoo and strange animal encounters?
The book I spoke about a few paragraphs before? Well, I left it behind in the park, along with my brand new umbrella and sunglasses. Now I will never know what happened to the Dutchman and his illegitimate daughter. Bah!
Anyway, you can see all my pictures here.
Comments