When my friends Matt and Emily came to visit, I wanted to show them the sites of Madison. Since Emily goes to Notre Dame, Camp Randall was out - the thought of football brings her close to tears these days - but we found plenty of other touristy things to do.
We walked down State Street all the way to the Capitol, ate Ian's mac n' cheese pizza and hit a few parties. But the grand finale was the Vilas Zoo.
When you're young, the zoo is one of the greatest places on earth. All creatures great and small are just waiting for you to come play with them. For a child, going to the zoo could be the event of the summer, if not the year.
However, Matt, Emily and I soon realized the zoo loses some of its magic when you're older. None of the animals wanted to entertain, not even the monkeys. A few animals weren't even outside - I don't care if the sign said tigers are masters of camouflage, unless that thing was the James Bond of tigers, there was nothing hiding in that cage. The zoo just isn't the same to a group of 20-year-olds, no matter how ridiculous their imaginations are.
We began by wandering through the petting zoo. Goats were running and pooping everywhere. A squirrel was scampering around stealing goat pellets, but it wouldn't let us pet it no matter how hard we tried.
The foulest animal in the petting zoo was a very temperamental pot-bellied pig that enjoyed chasing Emily around. Matt was convinced it looked just like a guy from his math class. He said this was a compliment, but I don't think I ever want to meet his friend.
We did get a good laugh at a giraffe licking the lock on its pen. Emily and I were certain it was trying to escape. Matt had a darker theory that the poor giraffe was hoping there was lead-based paint on the fence. We left when we overheard some parents telling their children to stay away from the weird people.""
If we thought Matt's joke about the giraffe was bad, we hadn't heard the worst yet. We were at the far end of the zoo, near the back entrance when a family came in and a little boy ran up to the fence between Emily and me.
""Mommy, Mommy, where is the animal in this pen?"" asked the adorable little boy, full of innocence, wonder and too much sugar.
""I don't know,"" his sadistic mother said. ""It's probably dead.""
As the little boy ran away screaming, Emily and I stared with horror-struck faces. Even Matt said that was pretty low.
We had been disappointed by the monkeys, ignored by the polar bears, and were suffering from a severe lack of elephants when we thought of our last resort. Penguins never fail. If animated movies had taught us anything, it was penguins were always singing and dancing, surfing or plotting for world domination. Hope sprung anew and we dashed over to the penguin cage.
Nothing. No snazzy dance number, no impressive surf stunts, not a single shifty hinting of evil schemes. Disney, Pixar and all those other movie studios had led us astray. The penguins were all asleep on the shore and being exceedingly boring. One indulged us enough by jump ing in the water for a few minutes, but I had to agree with the 9-year-old next to me - this sucked.
If the penguins weren't up to playful antics, there was no hope left for the zoo. Dejected, we wandered into the last exhibit, and there they were: prairie dogs.
We were hooked. We spent the rest of the trip being amused by their adorable shenanigans - until Emily started bawling. Turns out, the tiny, weak prairie dogs reminded Emily too much of her school's football team, and we had to leave.
If you are looking for someone to visit the zoo with you, e-mail Megan at mcorbett2@wisc.edu.
