One of the aspects of my job is that I get to travel (before the pandemic and before my late wife became ill) and whilst on the one hand it seems glamorous, the inside of an office looks pretty much the same anywhere around the world you go. That said, there are perks to doing what I do.

There was a gentleman called Calvin who had been on the client site for a while and a regular at Dallas Zoo, so much so that he was granted privileges the normal paying public didn’t normally experience, and one weekend he invited me to join him and explore what they had to offer. The last Zoo I’d visited was probably in the 70s and a school trip to Twycross.

I’m aware that Zoo’s are controversial for some, even more so if you’ve watched “Tiger King“. Do you think she did it? Leave a comment below.

None-the-less, it was an experience and a positive day to say the least, we were allowed to enter the bird cages and feed the birds from coated lolly sticks. That’s when I discovered that the talons and feet padding on many of these birds are really soft and gentle like nothing I’d felt before.

Some of the Birds knew Calvin well (I think because he was always there at weekends and evenings when he could). The star of the show were the birds, forget the Cheetah’s, the poisonous frogs and reptiles, the birds stole it (literally). Their handlers set up for about an hour, and the birds were trained in a way that they could take a dollar bill from a member of the audience, and later on return it to the same person. I thought it may have been related to the position the person was sat in, but it turned out no, as these were randoms. The skills and intelligence of the birds is more than I’d experience when I was a young ornithologist as a kid.

Anyway, enough of the pre-amble, here’s some clips of my Trip to the Zoo, Ice-Cream🍦optional.

And a selection of photo’s taken, (I’m not in any of them).