Book Entry 170: 1986 A Trip to the Fresno Zoo

          One of our first big trips with all five kids was to the Fresno Zoo.  The kids ran from one exhibit to the next.  Each animal seemed more amazing and spell binding than the one before.  The elephants were a hit.  The tigers were loud and scary.  The bears were holding their feet and rolling on their backsides so they were funny.  The birds were screeching and scared Charlie a little.  The snakes and other reptiles brought screams from the girls and giggles from Adam. 

We wandered around the zoo all morning.  When noon rolled around we had hot dogs and chips for lunch.  Heidi bought a bag of peanuts and took Adam to the monkey cage to sneak a few to the spider monkeys.

After a few minutes passed Adam came running back to us, grabbing at our hands, and telling us we just had to come with him.  He had found the neatest animal at the zoo.  He seemed sure we’d want to finish our meal where we could watch the orangatang.

Adam showed us why he thought this animal was worth moving our position to watch.  He started waving his arms in the air then put them under us arms and started making shrieking noises taunting the animal.  That old orangatang had played this game before.  After a moment a quiet rumble became audible.  It grew in volume reaching a grand crescendo of screams.  The louder he screamed the more agitated his actions were.  He started hitting his tire swing with the back of his hands then he grabbed it by the ropes and swung it as hard as he could.  When his show was just about over he scooped up a pile of his poop off the ground and while running at his growing audience threw it as far into the crowd as he could.

Several people had joined Adam while this show was taking place.  Most of them got out of the way but there were a few girls in the crowd, not ours, who had ducked down instead of running.  They had monkey poop in their hair for the rest of the day.

The show repeated itself about every fifteen minutes until the orangatang finally got tired and went inside to rest.  Luckily none of our family ever got hit with his “gifts.”  I’m not sure but it seemed the orangatang was enjoying putting on a show for us.  I was never quite sure why Adam thought we’d want to watch while eating but we did all finish our hot dogs.  As little as Charlie was at the time he knew when the sound got loud the crowd was going to scream and laugh and run! 

          It was kind of gross but that old monkey gave us a great family memory!  He is sitting in the tree below just out of site...Heidi is already getting ready to run!