I had the wind taken out of me this morning. I awoke feeling exceedingly stiff, a sure sign that despite my efforts to keep moving after the race yesterday I clearly should have logged a few more miles to aid in recovery. But I had resolved through an early alarm clock setting to use today as a longer walkabout anyway. Medvedgrad Castle is about 6 miles away from here and that seemed like a great distance to loosen up and get the muscles back on track. Unfortunately, after packing up a daybag and throwing on my jacket, I tapped in the address into my iphone and… well… this popped up:
Sigh. Of course it’s closed on Monday. Things I wish I’d known before getting up at the crack of dawn.
I found myself reeling a bit, unsure of my footing as I had so planned the day around the trip to the castle. There’s a better than 50% chance of rain tomorrow so I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it up to the castle after all. The weather folk have been wrong before though… maybe it’ll work out.
In the meantime, I took the morning as an opportunity to visit the Zagreb Zoo. I had scoped it out yesterday after the marathon but had gotten up there with only an hour or so before closing. It’s nestled in a large natural park area, reminiscent of New York’s Central Park if it were a bit, um, off-center. Originally opened in 1925 with only 3 foxes and 2 wild owls, today the Zagreb Zoo covers an area of 7 hectacres and offers 275 species of animals running the gamut of kingdom, phylum, class, order family, genus, species and from all the continents.
I’m not usually a huge zoo person. I have a weird push-pull over the treatment of animals and their confinement. Some zoos or preserves are really well done and clearly demonstrate a care and conerns for preservation and presentation of ecological and educational import. Others feel like rundown sideshow attractions meant to turn a quick buck regardless of how anyone is treated.
The Zagreb Zoo is undergoing a renovation/expansion so there was some care being shown to try and improve the lots of the animals’ lives. But it still felt just a bit… sad to me. Maybe it was the day itself, heavily overcast. Or maybe it was my own personal baggage, both zoological and individual, that played upon my perspective. Whatever the case, it was a weird visit for me. But I took a variety of photos, as I’m wont to do, because like the animals at the zoo, this website has to be fed.
I was apparently visitor number 104 today to the zoo.
There’s something fishy about this…
Say, I found them all in the above photos. Did YOU find Nemo and Dory?
All this way and I’m back in Madagascar…
Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?
You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead – your next stop, the Twilight Zone!
So… I saw this in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It does not end well.
Case in point — the Zagreb Zoo also offered a cage perspective for “Homo Sapiens.”
Three shots for the road:
1) Compared with bears…
2) A creepy kangaroo photo board
3) A children’s playground that screams “Help me! Help me!”
