October 18, 2009 was a good day to visit the Little Rock Zoo. It was a spectacular early fall day and the critters were, in the inimitable words of Lester “Road Hog” Moran, “on their best behav-yer.”
I feel compelled to digress for those of you who are culturally deprived in the legend of Lester “Road Hog” Moran and the Cadillac Cowboys. They are (were) in actuality, the Statler Brothers who were masters of musical parody. They recorded two Lester “Road Hog” Moran albums which still bring the house down. Strangely enough, fellow musicians were the greatest fans of the routine which parodied a small backwoods country band. Lester always admonished “Witchita,” his guitarist to be on his best “behav-yer.”
Back to the Zoo
Seems like we were originally talking about a trip to the zoo when we flew off on the music tangent. It was indeed a good, if nto perfect day, to visit the zoo. Click here for the original post.
We managed to shoot tigers, apes, antelopes, giraffes and more, not all of which we are showing. On the cute scale, there were Lemurs, always interesting. On the ferocious scale, we got a good shot of a Malaysian Tiger, a rare species.
Along with the Tiger, we shot a tiny antelope, a “Kirk’s Dik dik,” who tops out at 15 pounds when fully mature. Seeing both ends of the critter spectrum gave me pause to think about how we look at critters and perhaps at ourselves.
I expanded on those thoughts on the companion story to this epistle on the Photo of the Week page at Corndancer dot-com where you will see pictures of the tiger and the antelope. The story titled “It ain’t Tony.” takes a realistic look at the magnificent beast and her place in the balance of nature, which as of late, is teetering a tad too much.
Thanks,
Joe Dempsey
Weekly Grist for the Eyes and Mind.
http://www.joedempseyphoto.com/
http://www.joedempseycommunications.com/
http://www.corndancer.com/joephoto/photohome.html
Filed under: Behind the Scenes, but wait, there's more | Tagged: Antelope, Kirk's Dik-dik, Lemurs, Lester, Lester Road Hog Moran, Little Rock Zoo, Malayan tiger, Parody music, Statler Brothers | Leave a comment »