Listing Through Life

My wife, daughter and I spent the afternoon and evening on December 30 at Brookfield Zoo. While it was light out, we saw most of what there was to see, but animals don’t really seem to be the point at Brookfield anymore. In some of the buildings, there are more displays on recycling and climate change and water usage than there are animals. There weren’t many people around either.

Once it got dark, things got impressive.

There were Christmas lights everywhere.

At 5:30, the festivities began. We started with the laser and light show outside the Bird House.

The show was really pretty twinky, and very little of the music was actually Christmas music, but the laser lights in the tree branches were impressive. It ended after about 10 minutes. We walked around enjoying the lights. I passed up an opportunity to get my picture taken with a llama with a big red bow ($9.00) and we skipped the merry-go-round and the stage show with dancing snowmen. We made it to the Bear Grotto in time for “Singing to the Bears.” The polar bear enclosure was lit up with red lights and snowflakes. Zoo employees dressed as a bear and a penguin handed out sheet music and four kids led the crowd in four Christmas carols. The bears seemed unimpressed — they sprawled together on a small ledge and wrestled lazily. They can be faintly seen in the photo, just above and to the right of the speaker.

The photo above is time-lapse — only one of the dolphins was lit up at a time.

It was a beautiful day to begin with — clear and near 45, but after dark it got decidedly colder and the wind picked up. By the time we got home, it was snowing hard.