Monday, February 16, 2009

Navel Gazing with the Lions

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we have a breeding program for rare and endangered deities. In that specially-created habitat over there (generously funded by Citibank and our local billionaires) are the final two deities known to have belonged to the peoples of ancient Micronesia. Please don't tap on the glass! It annoys them, just as it would annoy you.

Today dawned sunny and cold. It occurred to me to spend a little quality time with my daughter The Spare, who, even as we speak, is being swept away from me on the teenage tide. So we went to the Philadelphia Zoo.

Zoo animals are just like bored gods. In many cases, their kinds have been wiped from the planet, and the only place they reside anymore is in small cubicles with the right mixture of humidity and nourishment. "Only 30 of these animals are known to exist in the wild," reads one sign. In the exhibit, a spotted paw extends from a den ... some beautiful large cat whose ancestors probably ate Homo erectus for breakfast.

Today I saw the rarest creature of all -- Little Girl Spare, enjoying the cute monkeys and the harvest mice, making her own jokes and laughing at mine, snapping photos and bundling herself against the wind. Little Girl Spare, hoping the Andean condors would not be in their cage, covering my mouth as I worshiped them loudly (this has happened before), mapping our way to her favorite exhibit, the Small Mammal House.

Although I'm usually partial to the Andean condor, and usually to the exclusion of all else, today my favorite sight at the zoo was my daughter. May every endangered God and Goddess preserve and protect her, now and forever.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

blessed be xx

sageweb said...

How nice of you to have a day together. I bet she will always remember the quality time she got with her Mom.

Hecate said...

The other night Son and G/Son and I drove by a church. G/Son: Is that a bank? Nonna: Yes, it's a kind of a bank. Son: Moooooooom!

But he was driving, so he couldn't cover my mouth.

Servitor Lucem said...

Ok, Hecate, now you've made me think of something that always makes me chuckle (great sory, BTW).
I work near St. Patrick's Cathedral, on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. St. Paddy's is between 50th and 51st Streets, and takes up the entire block between Fifth and madison. It's pretty much all done in that Gothic style that cathedrals are known for.
On 50th Street, near the middle of the block, behind the end of Sak's, there's this building. Now, it houses the New York Health and Raquet Club. It, like the cathedral, is done in that Gothic style, and clearly was built to match St. Patrick's. There are sonework niches in the facade, and, over the doors, are escutcheons of stonework, emblazoned with...
Dollar signs.
Yes, I guess this place once was a bank, but the sight of those shields over the doors, with the dollar signs on them, across from the matching cathedral architecture, never fails to crack me up, at least a little.
From time to time, I'll helpfully point these details out to passing tourists, who stare vaguely into space and move on...
A bank, indeed. :-)

Servitor Lucem said...

...and apologies for my numerous typos. Right now, I'm working on an insert for something called The Bad Girls Club and my brain has been about half turned into dust...

yellowdoggranny said...

sometimes the love you have for your child is enough to almost stop your heart with joy..