Did You Ever Lose an Elephant?

While in Missouri, my mom decided she wanted to go to the St. Louis Zoo. To me, that meant one thing: elephants. We hadn't been in years, since the first and last time we had gone previously had been on a 140˚ day with a humidity of approximately 6000%. I remember being completely confused as to why the hyenas and rhinoceroses--

WAIT. I need to establish that I had to check the dictionary on that one. I was desperately hoping the plural was rhinoceri, even though my English major self knew it would never make sense. But did you know that rhinoceros can be singular or plural? I added the "-es" for clarity. Okay, I'm done.

Anyway, I remember wondering why my father seemed to think the heat a perfectly acceptable explanation as to why the animals seemed so lethargic. As I tried to explain to the giraffes, "You're from AFRICA. This heat can't be that bad. Do stuff."

I've always found zoos a little depressing, and I suspect that within a century they will cease to exist, replaced by wildlife sanctuaries with--okay, I've got this whole convoluted plan for zoo replacement, but I won't go into it here. At any rate, I hate seeing the animals that pace and leave trails in the grass of their pens, clearly depressed and bored. The panthers always seem miserable, and for some odd reason, giant anteaters seem to have a tough time of it, too. I think zoos should replace all their big cats with cows and goats and animals that don't mind tedium, but those would be the most boring zoos of ever to anyone, and I'm getting off track. Come to think of it, giraffes seem to do all right--they certainly have no problem breeding in captivity. Maybe hoofed animals are the key. Oh, lord, I'll stop.

Let's try this again. I was happy to see the new improvements to the zoo, including much larger enclosures for some of the animals. (Though I must wag a finger at the St. Louis Zoo for packing four hippos into a strangely small place. I'm no zoologist, but they're hippos. It seems impossible that they would be comfortable with that.) The maps, though, were almost no help at all, and every path curved and twisted the wrong way at every possible moment. As such, I grew increasingly frustrated in my search for elephants, especially as closing time neared.

Really, the point of all this is that my father and brother will not stop quoting me and announcing out of the blue, "I WANT TO SEE SOME GODDAMNED ELEPHANTS."