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It was a Saturday in February and because the day was shaping up to be warmer than any of the preceding 60 days, my family and I determined that a visit to the Denver Zoo would cure our winter despondency. We had nothing holding us back – the house was clean, the bills were paid and we’d purchased all of the Webkinz we could purchase for that week. The taxes were not done, but I felt they could wait until at least August, so we packed the family in to the car and headed into town.

On the surface the zoo seems nothing more than animals in cages and if you were a face-value sort of person, you could leave it at that and not see the beauty that lies just under the facade. I am overly-analytical, so to me the zoo is a complex series of unlimited possibilities - a magical place filled with wonderment and surprise. Of course I’m talking about animal poop.

My family visits the zoo for the sights and sounds, but we stay for the smells. There is nothing quite like entering the Pachyderm house on a sunny afternoon and catching your first whiff of Rhino dung. As my eyes water from the noxious aroma, I am transported to the savanna where my keen tracking nose has led me to within a hundred yards of my prey. “Johnson,” I say in a sophisticated English accent, “hand me my Tapir gun.” I recommend visiting the pachyderms if for no other reason than to catch a glimpse of an elephant or a rhino peeing. The elephant is amazing because of sheer volume, but the rhino has a gift. This animal can direct his flow at will, without the use of hands or magic tricks. Forward? OK. Backward? Sure. To have that kind of control – well, this is something that you just have to see to believe.

Of course, we know that all animals poop and pee. There is no better place to illustrate this important point than at the zoo. As we made our way towards the Great Apes, we stopped to visit with our cousins the monkeys. I have fond memories of visiting the zoo as a lad – specifically of the monkey at the Houston zoo that enjoyed performing his masturbation variety show in front of an audience. Since then, though I think they are cute, no monkey has really captured my heart the way that little guy did way back when.

My family fell in love with the Giant Elephant Shrew that day. We planned on purchasing one as a pet, but to our chagrin discovered that they were not for sale. These little guys were running around in the same exhibit as the lemurs, which were the lead in to the big show – the gorillas.

The last time I wrote at length about the zoo, I observed that the animals were quite amorous in the winter months. We saw none of that on this visit. Additionally, I mentioned that the gorillas had invented a game of eating their food, throwing it up and then eating it again. Fortunately we were spared that on this adventure. In fact, we were spared a lot of things. In short, the gorillas were insanely boring. They did absolutely nothing at all, except poop.

First one of the females pooped. She seemed as though she might be pooping into her hand, and this excited me. When I was a lad a gorilla pooped in his hand and then threw it into the crowd, where it landed squarely on my grandmother. This was horrifying to her, but quite amusing to me. I was hoping for a repeat of this, but sadly it was just an itch, and the poop landed safely on the ground. Then the male went to the same exact spot, and he pooped. I could not help thinking that we could have seen much of this at home by watching my dogs.

Our next stop was at the Lorikeet exhibit – an open air venue where one can actually feed nectar to the brilliantly colored birds – until 3:00. We arrived at 3:15 and were allowed in with the understanding that we would not stay too long because the birds needed to be put away by 4:00. The Lorikeet is an extremely well-respected member of the parrot family that feeds on the nectar of 5,000 species of plants. All this nectar makes them have to pee, and we saw no less than seventeen birds pee that day. We stayed low, made our way through the middle of the path and escaped the exhibit as dry as we had entered.

As the zoo winded down for the evening we made our way to the snack shack. We sat with our ice cream cone and salty pretzel to reflect on our day’s outing and I took a moment to savor the experience. Children grow quickly. They can age several months in just a weekend and if one is not careful, one can get caught up in life and miss out on this incredibly influential and powerful time. As a father, I keep a constant watch on my level of involvement – attempting to strike a balance between over-protection and leniency. Every experience can be educational, even when the unexpected occurs.

In addition to the family time that this trip to the zoo provided, I wondered aloud what the girls would take from this experience. “Did you learn anything today,” I asked. The girls were thoughtful for a moment. Just then a flock of geese passed overhead, and one let fly, so to speak. Then it hit me. Not the poop, but the point of the day. Maybe I couldn’t provide everything for my kids – I could not make monkeys masturbate or gorillas throw poop. But what I could do was set the stage for adventure –allow the girls to experience what the world had to serve up. “We learned that animals poop a lot,” my eldest daughter said. That satisfied me. Because, in the end, isn’t that something we all need to learn to live a successful, happy life?

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