cwmurphy.com

It was crazy serious hot at the zoo. We carried along water bottles in our backpacks and filled, and refilled, and then filled them again, over and over throughout the course of the trip.

NOTE: This manic work schedule has played hell with my travel equilibrium. Making a headlong dash to the nation's capital in the hottest part of the summer, on a Saturday no less, now makes a perfect sort of carpe-diem sense to me. Be afraid.

These photos are fairly representative of what we saw yesterday:
sleepy, bored animals. The few who did look up from their dozing gave us derisive "So that's what the top of the food chain looks like, huh?" glares before promptly falling back asleep.

Fast-forward and we were standing out in the sun, my lovely wife and I, waiting in line with the other pilgrims to enter the zoo's climate-controlled pandatorium.

I wiped the sweat rivulets from my forehead and swigged down more water. "I can smell all that panda goodness from here, baby," I said.

This, we soon learned, is how pandas spend 95% of their time.

SCIENCE-NOTE: The other 5% is apparently spent making fumbling attempts at reproducing the species.

Drawing (perhaps) an unfair comparison, the bears in Pigeon Forge stand up on their hind legs and wave their paws for thick slices of green apple.