The Knoxville Zoo and Zoo Camp! - Part IV from the Skiing Bear Album
The Knoxville Zoo is a wonderful and happy place. I went there every summer for many years and never got tired of it. Some memories:
- During the earlier years, I always wore my “zoo dress” when we went. The zoo dress was really a animal print covered skirt with a matching vest. I inexplicably always wore a long-sleeve turtleneck shirt underneath the vest along with white tights and my black cowboy boots. I do not understand how I did not burn up on those hot summer days, but I seem to be enjoying myself well enough in this picture of me and Michael on the tortoise statue. Aren’t we adorable?
- One of my favorite parts of the Knoxville Zoo was the petting zoo. Mostly I liked the llamas, and even more mostly I loved Lilly the Llama. I did not particularly like the goats. My general goal in the petting zoo was to avoid the ambitiously hungry goats and feed all my 25 cent handfuls of sweet feed to Lilly the Llama. Sometimes I did not succeed, and was forced to retreat to a rock in order to not become completely overwhelmed by the goats.
- The most memorable part of Zoo Camp was making large cardboard and paper mache animals for the use of giving real large animals something to attack. My group clearly displayed expertise in this project. I mean, have you ever seen such a perfect representation of a giraffe made from cardboard in you life? The zebra made by one of the other groups was pretty good, too. However, it’s very clear that the winner of the which-cardboard-animal-figure-gets-picked-to-get-mauled-by-a-lioness-and-her-cubs-this-week-while-you-campers-get-to-watch award was not chosen by the proved skill of the cardboard animal designers seeing as how the whatever-it-is won. If I remember correctly each group was told to pick one of the numbers 1, 2, or 3 and the whatever-it-is group picked the predetermined number. Lucky ducks.
And that brings us to the close of the Skiing Bear Album given to me by my Grandma Allen. She took all of the pictures therein except the ones of her and me on the Ferris Wheel at Dollywood. Granddad always took those every year.
Stay tooned for Theatre Album!