A Zoo-perific Day

I have been dying to go to the zoo here in Chennai. I first heard about it from my driver. He said it was a very large and nice zoo. Yeah right, this is India...how nice could it be??? However, I have heard since from a couple of other people that the zoo is actually nice for Indian standards. Since Beth needed a photo of an elephant for her brother-in-law, it finally gave me a good excuse to go check the zoo out.

We decided to go to the Arignar Anna Zoological Park (the zoo's official name) last Friday. I wanted to be there right when it opened to avoid the heat of the day. I figured it would be like all of the other zoos that I have ever been to...a lot of walking and HOT! Well we left the house a little later than what I wanted and arrived at the zoo at about 8:57 am. The information that I had found had said that the zoo opened at 8 am. Well when we arrived, we found that it didn't open until 9 am. Boy am I ever glad that we didn't get there at 8 am!

The first thing that impressed me about the zoo was that it had the same admission price for locals and foreigners. The price was 15 rupees per person...or 38 cents. However, we did have to pay a camera fee of 25 rupees per camera. So the grand total for the 3 of us to go to the zoo including our cameras was 120 rupees or $3. What a bargain.

The second thing that impressed me about the zoo was the treatment of the animals. When I visited the zoo in Beijing, I was very saddened by the accommodations for the animals. They were kept in small concrete enclosures. I had heard the zoo wasn't very nice, but the lure of seeing panda bears was too much for me, and so I had to go. I would never go back to the Beijing zoo, and I definitely would not recommend it to anyone. I expected the same thing of the zoo here. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the animals in the Chennai zoo are kept in open environments that would be similar to their natural habitats. Since we went to the zoo to see the elephants, we were somewhat disappointed that we couldn't see them up close (hence the reason why the photo of the elephant posted earlier isn't a better picture). The elephants were in an environment that made them look like we were seeing them on a safari. Their exhibit was huge and knowing that they had room to rome and do their own thing more than made up for our selfishness of not being able to see them better.

The final thing that impressed me about the Chennai zoo was how clean it was. Things here in India generally just are not so. Compared to exhibits that would be found in the U.S., yes the zoo was dirty...but for Indian standards, it was very well kept. There were pop bottles and such in different exhibits. However, I imagine this is because the local Indian people threw them in the exhibits to try to get the animals to move. They just don't know any better. While we were walking through the crocodile and alligator section though, there was a zookeeper who was jumping in the different exhibits picking up the trash.

So, besides seeing an elephant, I wanted Diane and Beth to be able to say that they saw a King Cobra snake while they were here in India. I felt seeing one at the zoo would be better than seeing one in our yard!

The best story of the day at the zoo happened while we were in the snake house. In the rat snake exhibit, there was a lady in cleaning it. Rat snakes aren't poisonous, and obviously she doesn't mind snakes as they were just crawling over her feet and such. It was giving us the creeps, but better her than us! All of sudden she takes off for the door, which is at the back of the exhibit. One of the rat snakes had climbed out the door and went down the steps. She just picked it up and flipped it back into the exhibit! By this point, we were pretty much ready to run for the door! However, they wanted to show us the King Cobras. So the same lady went into their exhibit and started moving them around...only this time she was using a long stick with a hook on it instead of her hands! As you can tell from the above photo, she was very successful in pissing them off so they flared up. I don't know how much she gets paid (and knowing India, it isn't much), but she needs to be making a whole lot more than she is!

Can you guess what animal this is? No, it isn't a giant potato floating in water. It's a hippopotamus. The hippos weren't too interested in being photogenic. It was hot, so they were keeping cool by keeping their heads under water. I honestly didn't think they were alive...that is until I went up to lean over to take this photo and he (or maybe it was a she) flicked his tail in the water. I jumped about a mile, and somehow managed not to drop my camera in the water. OK, so I didn't really come close to dropping my camera, but it did scare me!

I have no clue what kind of birds these are, but for some reason, this photo reminds me of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito from the movie Twins.

This had to be the funniest sign/photo of the day. We have no clue what an "Indian White" is, but we thought it would be funny to have Beth be one. Only afterwards, we realized that I should have been the one to stand by the sign.

Probably the biggest attraction of the day though had to have been the three of us. There were easily at least 2000 local school kids visiting the zoo, and they were more excited to see us foreigners then to see any of the animals. I have to say though they were all very well behaved. Being that the zoo is extremely large, we didn't end up seeing the kids for the majority of the day.

After walking around for over two hours, we were exhausted. Even though the zoo is shaded, it was still hot. We probably only got a third to halfway through all of the exhibits. We were going to go on the lion safari at the zoo. However, by the time we found the ticket booth, we were ready to go and didn't feel like waiting another 30 plus minutes for the next safari. Also, by this time, we all had to go to the bathroom and were getting hungry. Even though the zoo is nice by India standards, I didn't want to push my luck with using the bathrooms or trying the food.

I will make another trip back to the zoo someday. Next time though, I will definitely buy tickets to ride the tram around the park. We would have done that this time...only the tram tickets are bought at the same place as the lion safari tickets, and we didn't find this until the end of the day.