Boo Hoo

We took the Llama-ettes to Boo at the Zoo downtown last evening. Apparently, this is a big deal among the denizens of Your Nation's Capital, although I myself had never heard of it before.

Initially, I was quite crabby at the prospect of having to drive there late on a Saturday afternoon. Apart from the traffic, driving in Dee Cee is always a nuisance because, despite the best efforts of Monsieur L'Enfant, the fact of the matter is that one simply cannot go in a straight line from Point A to Point B, especially when Point A lies on the far side of the Potomac. Instead, one usually has to tack, like a ship beating into the wind, until one eventually arrives at one's destination. Fortunately, however, I know a few back roads that cut several successive loops off the trip, and we arrived at the zoo with a minimum amount of fuss.

The Boo proved to be a series of booths set up about the zoo grounds, most of them handing out treats of one sort or another, while a few gamely tried to engage the kiddies' interest in some animal-related demonstration or other. A few (although not many) of the animals were still viewable, at least until it got dark. We were fortunate enough, for instance, to get a good look at the pandas. They're usually hidden in the high grass of their outdoor habitat, but this time they were inside the glass-fronted panda house. One was zonked out, but we watched for a while as the other gobbled up his bamboo din-dins. We also saw the hippo stolidly shovelling in hay, plus a beautiful snowy leopard stalking about its pen with that crabby look inherent to all felines.

The thing that surprised me most was the number of adults dressed up in costume - at least half of them by my estimate. (My own costume, had anybody asked, was that of a slightly bored and harassed father, but I think it was probably too subtle for most people.) This is one of those things about which I have an iron rule, which is that once you're out of school, you've no business dressing up for Halloween. And the more effort put into the costume, the lamer it is. I saw a couple of Mr. & Mrs. Incredibles (none of them were), some D&D types who looked like they had wandered over from the Maryland Renaissance Festival, and perhaps the cutesiest (and I don't mean that kindly), a couple dressed up as Thing 1 and Thing 2 pushing a stroller with a brand new infant who could not possibly have known where he was or what was going on. As for the kids, there were many, many Harry Potter characters and a lot ot Star Wars figures as well. Also a liberal helping of what I consider to be correct costumes - witches, vampires and other denizens of the macabre. (One kid had the heads of Dubya and Cheney perched on his shoulders. I'm not exactly sure what was the point of the exercise.) The folks manning the various boothes were costumed as well. My favorite was a long-legged young lady who seemed to be dressed as Pippi Longstockings' extremely slutty sister. Not sure if the sponsors of that particular booth necessarily would have approved.

Although we started off fairly able to move about, the place became absolutely mobbed after dark. I fail to see why anybody would consider it "fun" to meander about at glacial speed, devoting all of one's time and energy to not losing track of one's family in the squash. We dutifully plodded around as the Llama-ettes hoovered their way down the booths, but after the five year old managed to get lost in the small mammals house and only reappeared several minutes later in tears, we decided we'd had enough.

I was actually in pretty good spirits on the way home, so I was rayther surprised that the Missus graded my performance on the trip as a "C". She claimed I had been sulking, a charge that I denied vigorously. It was true that I had not looked forward to going (indeed, I had been holding the threat of cancelling over the heads of the Llama-ettes all day like a Sword of Damocles), but once we made it there without any trouble, I perked up considerably. I also pointed out that she was just as tired of it all by the end as I was. This morning, after thinking it over, she bumped me up to a "B", with which I am quite content. (The fact that I'm posting about it now probably means that she'll fail me altoghether, however.)