Things I've Learned From The Animals In My Life ~ When You Weigh ...

Lets Face It:

When you weigh in at 400 pounds, have an 8 foot wingspan, can lift a Buick and occasionally have a bad day when people give you a hard time...

...You can pretty much do whatever you want in public.

While at the Omaha Zoo a couple of years ago, enjoying a very nice day out, I encountered the outdoor gorilla enclosure. I spent an hour or more standing or sitting on a bench, watching these magnificent, gentle giants.

There were several large males in the outdoor enclosure, just minding their own business as best they could in an un-natural concrete environs. They just sat about, eating shoots of plants tossed in by the 'keepers', looking up at the sun, scratching, picking at bugs, preening, and occasionally getting into rather violent, yet short-lived and not damaging tiffs with one another. Basically doing their everyday gorilla thing as best they could.

And being living, breathing creatures of the planet, they would occasionally embark into those necessities of life that all of us biological creatures have to perform now and then. We humans just get the luxury of doing them in the semi-private world of our bathroom, home, or other areas within which we exist. You know...all the various biological do's and don't s of public etiquette our Mothers and 2nd grade teachers taught us all about years ago.

Jump ahead to the Zoo. This large male was sitting on a rock, being a gorilla, quietly picking his nose and looking at what he found, when a couple of young boys next to me made a few comments and had a good laugh at his expense. Nothing like the exuberance of unsupervised youth for a grin. The gorilla did not seem to be nearly as amused.

I swear he understood them. And in a very quiet yet direct manner, turned his head in a knowing way, and shot a quick stare in our direction as I was snapping away with the camera. The understated, yet direct stare he laser'd our way could bend metal. I lowered the camera for a moment, mouthed the words -"It Wasn't Me" - all the while pointing in the boy's direction with hand hidden behind the camera, using the standard, bent index-finger motion of deflected blame, before returning to my viewfinder once more.

Not sure he understood what I was inferring, but I would not want to find out the hard way that he didn't. Very soon he went back to minding his own gorilla business, and the boys moved on to harass other animals of the zoo. I stayed on for quite a while longer at the enclosure to watch and appreciate one of the most amazing animals of our small planet. Doing whatever he wanted, however he wanted, whenever he wanted, in the glorious warmth of the mid-day sun.

Thank You For Stopping In.