"She was the star"

Yesterday I spent the day at the Louisville Zoo. It was a great day, kind of a luxury with all this school work looming over my head. It's a nice zoo. More like a park with animals. It's bigger, I suspect, than the Audubon Zoo, and it has a wider array of animals. But it's not as nice, not as well laid out, and some of the animal environments seem a little dull for the animals. They do have a tremendous gorilla habitat (Dian Fossey, of "Gorillas in the Mist" fame, was from Louisville). But I went to the zoo to see the penguins.

(That comment makes sense to those of you who know I have several weird obsessions, sharks being my alpha obsession, pengiuns following a little behind at beta.)

It was, alas, a little disappointing. A nice enough environment, but only a handful of rockhoppers. Rockhoppers aren't among my favorites.

But still, it was a great day. Had lunch and ice cream. Pet the goats in the petting zoo. Checked out the cool vampire bat exhibit. After watching a few episodes of "Meercat Manor" on Animal Planet, the meercats were hilarious to watch. And after five hours, as I was getting ready to leave, I realized I'd missed a turn and missed a half dozen exhibits, so I made the rounds one last time.

On May 22, I wrote a joyous little blurb in this blog about the penguins' return from the Monterey Bay Aquarium to the Audubon Aquarium. They came by Fedex, and you could track them like little packages on the Fedex website. Patience, the 23 year old matriarch of the pengiun flock (do they call them flocks?), had been the star of the aquarium-- a penguin tamer than most housecats, who nuzzled on and cuddled with their keeper, Tom Dyer, every time he entered their environment. In June, I went to visit the penguins for my first post-K trip to the Aquarium. I cried when I saw them; heck I cried a dozen times while there. But it was Patience that I really wanted to see."

Last night I got a text message from Jason, who is working at a seminar in Nashville. It said, "Just met someone from Fedex. Said there was sad news about Patience. Google it."

Patience passed away from old age in late July. Every time i think about it, I get a huge lump in my throat. She was very old, three years older than the high end of her expected lifespan. But still, it's just so very sad.

There's a charming article about it here on NOLA.com. Even in California, Patience was the star. The article's author, Sheila Stroup, writes:

She was such a hit that volunteers printed up T-shirts with her picture on them to raise money for the Aquarium of the Americas. And when it was time for the penguins to come back to New Orleans, they joked about sending one of theirs disguised as Patience and keeping her in Monterey.

"Like anyone could play her part," Tom said.