Nothing like incessant rain to dampen the sprits, both human and animal. Today saw us in Munich - again - at the zoo. A CG-driven initiative. (I refer naturally to our visit, not the zoo itself.) I don't know about you, but I find the sight of wet animals cowering under their shelters really quite depressing. They were all quite far away, and the rain was very hard, so the overriding effect was that of brown, four-legged, forlorn clumps of indeterminate deer- or cow-like creatures everywhere we looked. We weren't even looking properly, more mooching round with a seen one, seen them all kind of attitude. There were odd splashes of colour - the flamingoes, for example. I'm not a big fan of flamingoes. I find them too lurid. But anyway. The rain and accompanying cold wind forced us into the primate house. The usual crowd were there on display, playing amongst and with themselves. And that was just the humans. We spent longer in there than we might normally have done, for even the stink of gorilla urine was more bearable than the rain. This gave me plenty of time to observe us (people) observing them (apes). How we anthropomorphise! It is particularly tempting to do this with primates as their expressions and gestures are so similar to our own. Some more than others, of course. Orang-utans look mournful, gorillas grumpy and fierce, and chimpanzees cheeky. But I bet they aren't feeling anything of the sort. My analysis ends here, have no fear. I once toyed with studying zoology but decided people are far more interesting.
So the week ahead beckons. We can run but we can't hide - a bit like our friends in the ape house. It'll be nice to see the back of March, and April 1 is always a good chance for playing a trick or two. I shall have to start planning now for maximum impact. Watch out, CG...
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