Buenos Aires petting zoo

Last week, Nate and I went to the Buenos Aires zoo, hoping to take advantage of the relatively sparser weekday crowds and enjoy a few quiet moments with the animals. Our plans were thwarted, however, by a school holiday known as a “day of reflection.” Held every twenty days, these are apparently intended to give teachers an opportunity to spend a day contemplating education. It also gives parents a chance to take their children on a weekday visit to the zoo, and the place was swarming with families when we arrived. Ultimately, the crowds did nothing to diminish our enjoyment of the zoo, and instead were a major enhancement to our visit. While at zoos in the United States the primary source of entertainment is observing animals in habitats as closely approximating nature as possible, in Buenos Aires the primary entertainment at the zoo is observing people interact with animals. At seemingly every turn, zoo employees hawk approximately gallon size containers of generic animal food, which indulgent parents never failed to purchase for their children. Oh, the hilarity that resulted: teens using food pellets to lure a muskrat out of a pond for cell phone camera photo ops, young children nearly losing an arm throwing food into the disgusting open mouths of camels, everyone blatantly disregarding the signs on a few animal’s cages that read “do NOT feed these animals,” etc. All in all, a treat. -EMW