Editor's note: The following story was written as part of a series called "Cheap Thrills" for the Albuquerque Journal. The criteria for these "thrills" are 1) a day-trippable circle roughly 150 miles from Albuquerque and 2) fees of no more than $10. Enjoy.
ALBUQUERQUE--There's a world of wild thrills to stalk at Albuquerque's Rio Grande Zoo.
"Snakes! Lizards!" a pre-teen boy exulted as he waited for his mom to pay at the admission gate.
"Grandma, I want to see the giraffes!" said another child.
Rio Grande Zoo
Location: 903 10th S.W. For further information, call 843-7413.
Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m
Cost: $4.25 for adults, $2.25 for persons 65 and older and children 3 to 15. Kids aged 2 and younger get in free.
Features: Exhibits of wildlife found all over the world.
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"I want to see the laughing heenas!" demanded a third.
The zoo doesn't have any laughing hyenas -- a beastly disappointment for that last kid. But some people are impossible to please. I watched yet another little boy who seemed to feel he was being forced to look at a tiger sleeping in the sun.
"Why is it," asked his father, "that no matter where we are, you want to be somewhere else?"
The Siberian tiger, the world's largest cat, slept on as people stopped to read aloud from the informative placard at the edge of its enclosure.
"Although excellent hunters," the tiger placard reads, "they fail to capture their prey 90 percent of the time."
When you go through a zoo, you're going to pay attention to some things, ignore others. In the Jungle Habitat building, for example, notable as much for its humidity as for the exotic birds flitting in the foliage, the world's largest pigeon struts.
The Victoria Crowned Pigeon is a blue bird as big as a small turkey with a crown of feathers topped by cottony tufts. It doesn't seem to notice it's no longer at home on a forest floor in New Guinea.
In the Reptile House, echoing with "Yecchs!" and other expressions of disgust voiced most frequently by grown women who shudder at each new sight of snake, there lurks the Children's Python. The informative placard notes soothingly of this Australian snake: "Not named after its food supply."
There seemed to be a constant crowd around the hill of dirt where a colony of prairie dogs basked in the sun.
The adults lay flat, splayed out like little rugs, while their offspring romped and wrestled. (We're talking here about the behavior of the prairie dogs, not the people.)
A few steps away from Prairie Dog Hill, a big-eyed, woolly alpaca lifted its nose over a fence to be petted by children held in the arms of their parents.
At the Bear Grotto, a polar bear paced incessantly back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. With each pass beneath the fake bluestone cliff of its enclosure, the polar bear walked beneath a thin cascade of cooling water.
Just a (potential) roar away, two African lions ignored each other as they yawned in the shade. "I'll bet you 25 cents that the one with all the hair is the male," a father told his little girl.
"The hair is called a mane," said his wife.
The little girl had a question implying further homework for them both: "Male?" she asked. "Does that mean it's the woman?"
In a pond near the zoo's entrance flamingos stood motionless on one leg. "They look so real!" said a zoo visitor, who passed by before any of them moved.
Flamingos normally get their pink coloration from a pigment called carotenoid found in the crustaceans, mollusks and algae they would eat if they weren't living in a zoo. Here, they'd eventually turn white, if it weren't for a synthetic pigment periodically deposited in their feathers.
At a far edge of the zoo, two 3-l/2-ton rhinos ponderously quarreled over which of them would occupy a one-rhino space where their meal of fresh-cut grass had been placed. As it turned out, the one with the bigger horn had to be content to wait.
"The White Rhinoceros," read the placard, "is named for the Dutch word 'wyte,' meaning wide -- which refers to its lips."
Around a corner from the rhinos, a teen-age boy stood at a railing and shouted "Hey!" at a group of Thomson's gazelles, native to East Africa.
"When alarmed," their placard said, "gazelles 'pronk,' spring along on stiff legs."
The gazelles ignored the boy's cries. Instead of pronking, they went on with their grazing.
A graze through the zoo, with stops here and there to pay extra attention to certain animals (including the peculiar beasts called humans), costs $4 for adults, $2 for persons 65 and older and children 3 to 15. Kids aged 2 and younger get in free.
The zoo, at 903 10th S.W., is open each day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (The admission gates close at 4:30 p.m.) On Saturdays and Sundays through the summer, the zoo stays open an extra hour.
For further information, call 843-7413.
Next time I go, I plan to spend more time hanging around in Ape Country. Lately, I've been starting to feel prehensile.
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