The Roar of a Lion

One of my Favorite places in Albuquerque is the Zoo. We took the opportunity to visit when my friend Jolene came for a visit with her family from Az. They used to live here and missed how great our zoo is and we really do have a very nice Zoo here compared to some I have been to. It was also the perfect day with the sun shining bright and the temperature just right for lots of walking My favorite exhibit is the lion probably because he makes me think of Aslan from the Chronicles of Narnia. My other favorite thing to do is see if I can make him bark at us. I have been pretty successful in this endeavor. So, every time we go, I have to make a complete fool of myself by barking at him so that he will roar back at us. You have to get just the right depth to your voice or it doesn't work. This day was no exception so we began barking at him and at first he wouldn't even look at us and just had this look that said "humans, don't they ever tire of making fools of themselves?!" By now we had drawn quiet the crowed of people around us but we just didn't care. At this point Aslan (I don't know his real name, but he is Aslan to me) turned and gave out a couple of wimpy roar/ barks to see if that would be good enough entertainment for us. We just kept encouraging him and letting him know that he could do better than that. When he decides to really go for it and roar, it can be heard from just about anywhere in the zoo. It is quiet impressive to say the least and people literally start running from wherever they are to catch a glimpse of him in action. A few more encouraging barks from us later and he finally gave in and stood up and let us have it. What you can't see in this picture is that his "lady" was lying on the ground below and when he finally starting barking at us she joined in. Whether it was a "pipe down, I'm trying to sleep!" or a "come on honey give them what they want so they will move on and leave us alone!" we will never know for sure, but either way it was really awesome! What was really cool was that we, Alsan and I, stared at each other for

quiet a while. He's got some beautiful

eyes and a powerful presence. After he stood there and gave out several earth shaking barks he staggered over to his spot and flopped himself back down on the rock quiet dramatically as if to say "that's all I got people, now please move along and leave us be." We cheered and clapped and thanked him for giving us a good show. What a great day at the zoo. I'm also sure that the other people that gathered around were grateful that it was us making fools of ourselves instead of them., especially since they benifited from it. We know that he talked to us because we asked him to and that's out story and we're stickin' to it so don't try and explain away our perceived gift of talking to

the animals. :) We like thinking we're special! ;)