The sad situation in Japan grieves me deeply and I so hope
that there are no more nuclear power plants melting down.
It is utterly miserable to lose you home but to be exposed
to high levels of radiation also is unthinkable. Meanwhile,
in my little corner of the world, wildfires are rampant.
Thirty people have lost their homes in the Choctaw and Harrah areas. The fires were so devastating that there is
nothing left but melted metal and ash. The survivors are
poking around in the debris but have not found anything.
No life was lost which was a miracle. I hope Jerm's family
was spared.

Oklahoma City has spent a lot of money on the zoo so Ted and
I went Saturday. It is not user friendly anymore. They
have erected a lot of roofed decks with chairs for families
who want to picnic and added a lot of concession stands. There are lots of dead ends and we walked for two hours and
had not gotten to the elephants or the big cats. We took
a tram and could have gotten off at the elephant show but
Ted was just too tired to get off and see them and wait for
the tram again. Next time, we will get a tram first thing
and get off and catch it again for the things that we really
want to see. One tram ticket can be used any number of times in one day.

One of the elephants is due to have a baby just any time.
They just got back from visiting a male elephant in the
Tusa zoo. Elephant pregnancies last 22 months.

The meer cats were adorable. A woman dropped a potato chip
to them and it started a meer cat war. Another great feature
was the cage you could enter with tiny little parrots and
buy nectar. The little things would stand on your hand and
drink from it. I don't know the correct name for these birds but they were extremely colorful. One tried to take
a bath in his cup.

They have enlarged the habitats for the big cats and made
them more like a jungle with large stands of bamboo. They
had red pandas and they were quite small. It was too early
in the season for the dolphin show. The tigers did not
present themselves and chose to stay deep in their bamboo
forest.

I want to go again soon and this time it will be done
intelligently. Parking was awful and the lines were
long to enter the zoo. We had to park at the Science
Museum and that in itself was a long walk to the Zoo entrance.

We are getting a few drops of rain now and then. I wish it
was a downpour.