A high-pitch noise erupted from my friend, Andrea, that could mean several things: a large bull was charging her down, an axe-murderer had begun stabbing her, or a bird had landed on her head. Needless to say, when I spun around I expected her to be facing down a terror, and there, crouched before her (battle-ready!) was a chipmunk. Aside from their unarguably fearsome aspect, chipmunks also were the most numerous of creatures at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs; they were in every enclosure: gorillas...chipmunks, tapirs...chipmunks, penguins...you get the idea.
One of the great lures of the zoo was its wallaby enclosure. We had spent happy hours in Australian zoos petting their marsupial cousins - the kangaroos - and had high hopes for this one. What we found was an enclosure filled with a lazy, sparse population, hand sanitizers, and a general sense of hands-off (rather museum-like, really). And while we tried to enjoy what we could of it, the contrasts between American and Australian outlooks were undeniable. The over-protective, rule-centric petting enclosure seemed to speak of an American paranoia that taxes even the most innocent of activities. I felt a wave of regretful nostalgia as I looked at those sloth-like wallabies, so distant from their Aussie relatives.
One herd that was not depressing, though, was the giraffe herd. Cheyenne Zoo is actually renown for its sizable and healthy giraffes. Their scientific name, Giraffa camelopardalis reticulata, means "camel-leopard-like one who walks swiftly"; they had an unnatural fascination with licking the wooden poles and concrete walls (even though crackers were being proffered); and they smelled like musky hay. We bought crackers that seemed more like cardboard to me and feed them to the eel-ish prehensile tongues sticking through the fence posts. One of the other girls feeding them scolded, "That's no way to proposition a lady!"...but I really think it depends on the lady ;-)
It was overall a lovely day filled with animal shenanigans and remembrance, but, most of all, chipmunks. Vicious, photogenic, little chipmunks.
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