Part Two of Joan and Amy's Adventures in San Diego: We're going to zoo (if we can ever find the entrance)

"Get out here!" Sydney said desperately as her car crawled through the busy San Diego intersection. "Here?" I asked, confused, unlatching my seat belt, and leaping into traffic, "but where is the zoo?"  "Less than a mile that way," Sydney yelled through her open window, "Good luck! Have fun!" Joan and I watched dismally as she sped away.

"Well," Joan said, checking her watch, "the zoo doesn't open for over an hour. Might as well grab some breakfast." Which is how I ended up spending 7.69 cents for each of the thirteen mini marshmallows sprinkled over the top of my Nutella crepes. After watching a grumpy grey schnauzer beat up a confused French bulldog, we started the long trek to the zoo.

The San Diego Zoo  takes up a large percentage of Balboa Park. Should be pretty simple to find. Nope. We saw evidence of the zoo. We smelled evidence of the zoo. But to our chagrin, we could find neither hide nor hair nor hoof nor fur nor feather nor fin. "This is ridiculous," Joan exclaimed, "35 million people visited the zoo last year. They managed to find the entrance. It can't be that hard."  We did successfully manage to tour Balboa Park. We entered a magical hedge maze where, as I skipped happily along, we were swept up by a park volunteer named Mary, a retired acupuncturist who insisted on showing us the hidden gems of the area. "I had a brain aneurysm several years ago," she told us, trotting along, "and I have short-term memory loss." She showed us all the good places to order beer. "Mimi, look at the amphitheater," she encouraged. "Who's Mimi?" Joan asked. "I believe I am," I told her. "Have we seen this fountain yet?" Mary asked. "Yes, Mary." Fortunately for us, Mary easily led us to the zoo entrance.

We spent twenty minutes trying to take a successful selfie before getting in the ticket line.  As I calculated the number of animals I had to see to justify our combined $105 admission fee, I heard a voice say, "I can get in six people." "Why thank you!" I joked to the kindly stranger who was addressing the family with a ba-zillion kids behind us. As luck would have it, the family was already armed with free passes and we were again swept up by a retired woman and granted safe (free) passage into the zoo.

Apparently I have a face only a docent could love because we talked to every zoo volunteer and animal expert in the park. We learned about the orangutan who underwent the first open-heart surgery of the primate world. Or maybe just the orangutan world. I got distracted from the talk about the orangutan by the actual orangutan. We visited the geriatric female elephant compound to learn that one of their girls required all her food in smoothie form. We also witnessed an elephant pedicure. Joan got into a heated altercation with the panda docent when the expert told us that a baby panda weighs three to five ounces which is 1/900th of the weight of its mother. "Well...that must make the birthing process easier," said Joan optimistically.  "You don't know the size of a Panda's vaginal canal," the docent snapped. "You don't know the size of MY vaginal canal," Joan yelled as I wrestled her away. It was an utterly magical day.

Baby flamingos!