Spielender Eisbär!, or, Sunday in the park with Clare

[muckefuck]

My Saturday naps paid off and I found myself not terribly tired on Sunday. Around midmorning, I roused niemandsrose and we made plans to do the Lincoln Park Zoo and Conservatory. Then I puttered a bit, went back to bed, and got up just in time to hop a bus southward.

She got held in Brown Line construction madness, so I hopped out at the north end of the park and took a stroll around the east side of North Pond. A sorry substitute for the forest outing kmon organised for Saturday morning, to be sure, but it wasn't without its rewards, including a group (family?) of six turtles sunbathing on a dead tree. They were entirely motionless with the exception of the smallest, who was also the furthest forward on the log, and the largest, who occupied the strategic position where the main trunk sank into the water. The little guy was slowly scrabbling forward, but came to a stop as I approached and then just swayed his head slightly; the big one very slowly and deliberately surveyed the scene, as if scanning for hidden dangers on a sunny spring day.

I found niemandsrose petting a large black dog in front of the conservatory. We did the full inside circuit, widdershins. Special features included a new sound installation in the Fern Room, a dazzling orchid show in the Orchid Room, and a Spring Flower Show in the seasonal swing space (whatever its called). We had a lot of questions about various plants at the time, but I'm damned if I can remember a one of them except what the hell was that tree which looks like it's adorned with cornrow wigs and African rhythm instruments? We also had a Piltdown moment with some blossoms and a synchronicity moment when we saw acanthus growing on an acanthus-leafed Corinithian column. I must say, I've been through that place a dozen times, but I never noticed half as much on any trip as I did when her eyes were with me.

Next, the polar bear! He was attention-whoring, doing laps in front of the underwater viewing window. Truly an amazing sight, that much bulk moving so fluidly. niemandsrose called him "Diva Bear". I said he was a Lincoln Park Yuppie Bear and, any moment now, he would get out of the pool and hit the climbing wall. A woman standing near us thought this was hilarious. "He's about to check his heart rate!" she said. When he did disappear from the pool, I joked that he was answering his cell, but it was only to dive back in.

We traipsed past some other large mammals to the Regenstein Birds of Prey exhibit which I've always considered an apt allegory for my former place of employment. We decided that the little birds fighting for scraps of meat were grad student employees scrabbling for grant money whereas the slow-moving vultures and eagles had already eaten their fill. A stork was doing truly disturbing manoeuvres with his neck, but the most unsettling sight was a large dead raptor in the corner of the cage. "It must be a while since they've done a headcount," niemandsrose commented. The snowy owl was on the ground and hooted at us as we left to go watch the seals.