They All Asked for You

We went on down to the Audobon Zoo and they all asked for you. (That's how the song goes...)

Seriously, we went to the zoo on Saturday. It was it's first weekend open since the disaster, and it was free to the public on this opening weekend. I think the entire population of the city must have been there - it was packed! The animals seemed actually glad to see all the people. They were right out there in front posing for pictures.

The zoo is located in Uptown New Orleans and did not flood, but it did get some wind damage. From what I understand many animals were evacuated to other zoos, but most have now returned.

My favorite sight was the new decor at the alligator swamp habitat. There is a floating swamp shack that is part of the display, and it had been altered to show the signs of the times with the addition of a blue roof, duct taped fridge, an empty box of MRE's and the telltale markings of the search and rescuers.

Most folks were very amused by it.

One rather ironic part of the swamp display that has been there for years featured an old flooded out car from the 1920's and a plaque that described the great flood of 1927 -- and how the New Orleans levees were built to prevent such a thing from ever happening again. If you click the picture you can read it for yourself. Harrumph.

(There is much controversy going on now in the City because the engineers will not commit to building the levees strong enough for a major storm. They only want to make them strong enough for a catagory 3 storm -- which is what we already have and obviously it was not enough! If they can't do it right, why bother?)

Anyway, aside from the crowd, most of the zoo looked pretty good. There were a few trees downed, the poor sloth had only one little tree left in his display where he could hang, a lot of the huge bamboo forest had fallen over, but overall it is still a very nice zoo.