THE ZOO

So this weekend was $5 day at the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa. When I was told that a normally $20 charge was going down to $5, well who am I to pass up a deal to see caged animals for cheap? So the four of us going were just going about a typical day in the zoo. The talker was talking, the photographer was photographing, the smokers were smoking (and no i won't tell you which one I was; you can guess....okay I was the talker.)

Moving on. So there we were just staring at all of the animals. Watching the monkeys, thinking they were cute; watching the rhinos, thinking they were massive; watching the birds, and not thinking much. Well then the clouds opened up and rain came down in droves. The four of us ran to the nearest shelter we could possibly find. Well, what do you know, there we were in the home of my favorite animal ever, the white tiger.

All of a sudden we had no choice, unless we wanted to be drenched, but to sit and watch the tigers. We couldn't just walk and look and walk on; we wanted to be dry so we stayed under the shelter of the white tiger habitat. There was no other choice but to watch these proud creatures.

Fortunately, we had quite a playful little duo. There were two tigers that decided all of a sudden they wanted to play. There they went just splashing though the water, bringing paws to paws and attempting to bite (but as huge as they are, they just appeared like little puppies). They splashed through thier little pool that was being soaked in the water falling from the sky, but they were enjoying their time so much.

Then sitting on a stoop that was built for them was another white tiger. This one seemed so much more regal then the two smaller kittens. It was massive and just sitting on its roost like it owned the place. Sitting their nonchalantly with the slashes of black on it's white fur (kind of like their paw slashed paint over their body.)

This massive creature turned to face the window i was gawking through and he just stared; looked away, looked back, and just stared. He kept repeating this. As he did this (I say he, to be honest, wasn't really sure and wasn't going to check) I looked into the face of this tiger and I don't know what happened, but something struck me, and I started tearing up. There was beauty I had never stopped to notice before. I mean here was, what I consider to be, the most beautiful creature ever created, and there were these visuals I never stopped to look at before. I looked into the animals eyes, and how they were shaped. I couldn't go anywhere so I watched how the creatures slashed through the water playing. I was fixated when it started playing with this ball hanging from the stand that was created for them. I couldn't stop looking at the one just lying down. These were creatures that I love, but it felt as if I saw them for the first time.

This moment just got me thinking about all the other things that I may have missed at the zoo. Maybe there is something about the elephant that I missed because I stopped to look and then moved on to the giraffe. Maybe I missed something even more gorgeous then normal in the girffe becuase I stopped to look only to think about the zebra in the area next to him.

As a culture we don't really stop to appreciate the natural things in life that exist around us. We think the sunset is gorgeous, but we never stop and sit and stare and literally watch it fall behind the horizon. We stop to look at it, think about it's beauty, and then go on about our lives. We never actually stop and APPRECIATE these things.

The world is getting more and more fast-paced (even at the zoo you are, in a way, kind of maneuvered through as if it was a nature based IKEA). We don't stop to appreciate the things that man had no control over creating.

The sun; the moon, the stars; the flowers; the breeze; the animals; the ocean; the smiles; ourselves. We don't overlook any of these things. We know they exist, I mean we would have to be complete baffoons to not know they exist; but we really don't ever take the time to appreciate them for ourselves.

Beauty is all around us, it basically inhabits every square inch of where we live. But as I stop to think about the subject, I don't know a single building that is so amazing that it beats the view of a sunset lighting up a horizon. I don't know of a single work of art that is so breathtaking that it can take away those split seconds when that proud white tiger glanced in my direction.

We have to cherish these moments. They are free. They are breathtaking. They are natural. They are there for us to view. I mean what have you got to lose except time? Of course when you ponder that statement, what is time anyway? What is all this nautral beauty when put against time, after all that is man-made.