STLF Tour - Memphis Zoo (Memphis, TN)

Date: April 3rd
Stop: Memphis, TN

When I've heard about that we were going to volunteer at the Memphis Zoo, I thought we would do things like cleaning animal dung and cages. But they wouldn't let us do such dirty works. My job was simply folding ads and membership info with a Danish girl named Cecilie. Other people helped selling tickets, guarding doors, keeping children safe, guiding direction, or putting back puzzles after they were messed up by children.

The Memphis Zoo was not big. Two pandas from China were the biggest stars there.

There was a dinosaur area, with those vivid moving and roaring machines, though I don't know what dinosaurs have to do with zoos.

This mascot was one of our travel partners. People who were mascots were so hot and sweated all over! Their works were probably the hardest.

The male gorilla.

The zoo built an area looking like a Chinese temple for the two pandas. They even had a Chinese garden with crappy festival couplets on the wall. I was lucky enough to see the panda eating. The other student complained she only got to see panda butts and lazy, sleepy pandas.

Those monkeys had mohawks!

Bald eagle, beautiful bird!

It was very touching to see two young bears chasing and playing with each other on the meadow. They did it for a long time. Cute!

We browsed through almost all the animals after our volunteering time ended, but didn't have time to see each one for more than a minute. Ryan, a boy who toured with us, had a special fondness for kiwi bird, but had never seen a real one. He said, "Let me spend a minute with it quietly," and stood in front of the glass cage, looking at the bird. Before he left, he said he would miss it very much.

Things got fun when Ryan saw a cage-full of Madagascar cockroaches. This biology major was afraid of cockroaches. I laughed silently in my heart at his face of disgust. When we were at Mississipi there were cockroaches in the old building and the poor Ryan was scared. I reminded him about the cockroaches and pretended that I was there to protect him, just because I kind of liked him and felt like teasing him. Okay okay I was kind of mean. LOL