A zoo is not a tea party

I wish I could have made it to one Tea Party or another, but I couldn’t. (Have to say, two million is an impressive figure.)
Instead, I went to the Detroit Zoo, where I didn’t get to see signs like this one:
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However, I did see signs like this:
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While the sign from the Tea Party is beyond dispute, the truthfulness of the sign from the zoo men’s room is highly debatable.
I don’t know whether they’re early risers, but I got a picture of this sleepy tree sloth at the zoo:
sleepysloth.jpg
Coco does a pretty good imitation of that, but usually in her favorite blanket, never in a tree:
cocosloth.jpg
And I caught a polar bear stretching itself in the hot sun, as if to demonstrate that it wasn’t especially worried about death from global warming:
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This pair of chuckwallas was in an air-conditioned indoor enclosure, and they seemed even less concerned than the polar bear:
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And as I walked through a plexiglass tunnel, there were actually seals swimming over my head.
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Finally, on the way out I couldn’t resist taking a picture of these two macaques sunning themselves in the most insolent manner:
macaques.jpg
Japanese macaques, mind you. In Detroit.
(In an amazing coincidence, they also happen to be the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil macaques, but as there were only two of them, I guess I can say whatever I want.)
MORE: Brendan Nyhan says that the DC Tea Party did not attract 2 million people. I was at the zoo, so I don’t know.
What I think would really suck would be for the numbers to vary depending on the political perspective of the people claiming to have them.
(You know, the way no one knows how many aliens there are….)


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3 responses to “A zoo is not a tea party”

  1. M. Simon Avatar

    If the seals don’t work on that tunnel you are going to get wet.

  2. Eric Scheie Avatar

    The seals? I didn’t know they were supposed to be working on the tunnel, much less that they might go on strike and cause a flood.
    I guess those perfidious pinnipeds are sneakier than I realized….

  3. Patrick in Des Moines Avatar
    Patrick in Des Moines

    Just went to the zoo recently myself. I’m a big fan of Zoos, Aquariums and Museums, but have grown tired of being preached to at all of them. The continual drumbeat of how man is threatening every other living thing is getting a bit old.
    My favorite recently was a lecture disguised as a ‘show’ where you could watch the sea lions getting fed. We were told that overfishing threatened the survival (of course) of the sea lions by cutting off their food supply.
    They also mentioned that one of the main functions of the sea lions is to prevent overpopulation of fish.
    I’m sure there’s a happy balance out there somewhere, but it doesn’t start with blaming man for everything.