Zoo: lemurs and birds (with a note on buses)

The Bronx Zoo has opened a new Madagascar exhibit in the old lion house. Like the Congo exhibit, it's organized on a geographic theme, and has material on conservation efforts in that part of the world. cattitude and I skipped a bunch of the educational displays (for now, at least: we'll be back) and just looked at the animals. Lemurs are incredibly cute, and the ring-tailed lemurs were all jumping around. The sifakas were much less active. (Also, the zoo describes Coquerel's sifaka as having "maroon" and cream fur; to us it looked like a rich chocolate brown.) I just looked at the web, and we appear to have missed a ring-tailed mongoose; we did see the fish, the Nile crocodile, and the boa. Also, I almost forgot to mention the tomato frogs, which apparently got their name for their color, and maybe also for the way they look round and mostly just sit in wait.

It's a good choice of what to do with the space: lemurs and Malagasy birds (and a few tortoises, snakes, and lizards) are small enough to be reasonably housed in that building, which lions emphatically are not. The zoo was also eager to tell us about the renovations they'd done to modernize the building and make it "green" (in terms of energy and water use) without changing too much, because it's protected as an architectural landmark.

I'm feeling much better than I was Friday evening, and wanted to keep it that way, so we weren't going to do our usual wandering all over. This meant missing some of the animals we particularly like: the snow leopards, for example, are at the other end of things from the entrance that we use (near the Bx12 bus stop), though the lemurs, fortunately, are near it.

By the time we were done with the lemurs and their neighors, it had started to rain, so we stopped in briefly at the nearby monkey house. Unlike the redone lion house, it was noticeably stuffy. We had hats, and it wasn't raining hard, so we went to the tiger exhibit (not entirely indoors, but the viewing areas have roofs). More stuffiness, but two fine tigers, which we watched for a few minutes. The World of Birds is indoors and nearby, so we had a fine time looking at exotic birds. They've brought a bunch of new birds in, and are a little behind in sign-making, but I'd rather have birds and hard-to-read signs than no birds and no signs. We did the first floor of that building, then I decided I'd better go home rather than push things. The bison are en route, and seemed their usual calm selves; they were near the viewing area we used, which was good.

The bus that takes us to the zoo is the Bx12, on which the MTA has introduced what they are calling "select" service. Fewer stops, dedicated bus lanes at certain hours (weekdays only, so I don't know how well that works), and machines at the bus shelters that collect fares: the idea is, you feed it your coins or your Metrocard, it gives you a receipt, and you show that to the bus driver when you get on. In theory, this is supposed to save time at stops, because showing a receipt is faster than having the machine read your Metrocard (and possibly deduct money from it, depending on card type) or putting coins in. In practice, well, the bus waited at one stop while a woman put coins in the machine; I don't know whether waiting is general policy, specific to "until people are used to it," or just unavoidable when she's sent her kids ahead onto the bus. Also, they've put annoying flashing blue lights on the front of all these buses. (That "annoying" is Cattitude's opinion as well as mine.) The other thing I'm sure of is that this is generating waste paper: every round trip produces two receipts that are utterly useless once you finish the bus ride. Still, if it's actually faster it will be worth it. I assume and hope the MTA is monitoring this to see how well it works, and whether it's worth trying to introduce on other bus routes. (If you can actually enforce dedicated bus lanes on Fordham Road, you can probably do so on a lot of the city's wider streets.)

[The lemur in this userpic is not one of the kinds I saw today.]

Zoo: lemurs and birds (with a note on buses)

The Bronx Zoo has opened a new Madagascar exhibit in the old lion house. Like the Congo exhibit, it's organized on a geographic theme, and has material on conservation efforts in that part of the world. cattitude and I skipped a bunch of the educational displays (for now, at least: we'll be back) and just looked at the animals. Lemurs are incredibly cute, and the ring-tailed lemurs were all jumping around. The sifakas were much less active. (Also, the zoo describes Coquerel's sifaka as having "maroon" and cream fur; to us it looked like a rich chocolate brown.) I just looked at the web, and we appear to have missed a ring-tailed mongoose; we did see the fish, the Nile crocodile, and the boa. Also, I almost forgot to mention the tomato frogs, which apparently got their name for their color, and maybe also for the way they look round and mostly just sit in wait.

It's a good choice of what to do with the space: lemurs and Malagasy birds (and a few tortoises, snakes, and lizards) are small enough to be reasonably housed in that building, which lions emphatically are not. The zoo was also eager to tell us about the renovations they'd done to modernize the building and make it "green" (in terms of energy and water use) without changing too much, because it's protected as an architectural landmark.

I'm feeling much better than I was Friday evening, and wanted to keep it that way, so we weren't going to do our usual wandering all over. This meant missing some of the animals we particularly like: the snow leopards, for example, are at the other end of things from the entrance that we use (near the Bx12 bus stop), though the lemurs, fortunately, are near it.

By the time we were done with the lemurs and their neighors, it had started to rain, so we stopped in briefly at the nearby monkey house. Unlike the redone lion house, it was noticeably stuffy. We had hats, and it wasn't raining hard, so we went to the tiger exhibit (not entirely indoors, but the viewing areas have roofs). More stuffiness, but two fine tigers, which we watched for a few minutes. The World of Birds is indoors and nearby, so we had a fine time looking at exotic birds. They've brought a bunch of new birds in, and are a little behind in sign-making, but I'd rather have birds and hard-to-read signs than no birds and no signs. We did the first floor of that building, then I decided I'd better go home rather than push things. The bison are en route, and seemed their usual calm selves; they were near the viewing area we used, which was good.

The bus that takes us to the zoo is the Bx12, on which the MTA has introduced what they are calling "select" service. Fewer stops, dedicated bus lanes at certain hours (weekdays only, so I don't know how well that works), and machines at the bus shelters that collect fares: the idea is, you feed it your coins or your Metrocard, it gives you a receipt, and you show that to the bus driver when you get on. In theory, this is supposed to save time at stops, because showing a receipt is faster than having the machine read your Metrocard (and possibly deduct money from it, depending on card type) or putting coins in. In practice, well, the bus waited at one stop while a woman put coins in the machine; I don't know whether waiting is general policy, specific to "until people are used to it," or just unavoidable when she's sent her kids ahead onto the bus. Also, they've put annoying flashing blue lights on the front of all these buses. (That "annoying" is Cattitude's opinion as well as mine.) The other thing I'm sure of is that this is generating waste paper: every round trip produces two receipts that are utterly useless once you finish the bus ride. Still, if it's actually faster it will be worth it. I assume and hope the MTA is monitoring this to see how well it works, and whether it's worth trying to introduce on other bus routes. (If you can actually enforce dedicated bus lanes on Fordham Road, you can probably do so on a lot of the city's wider streets.)

[The lemur in this userpic is not one of the kinds I saw today.]