Lions, Tigers, and Bears Oh My!

Today, Abihjit, Prajakta, and I went to the Hyderabad zoo. It was actually larger and more extravagant than I originally thought it would be. After being quickly departed from our money and not quite understanding what we were in for, we boarded a caged bus and set off. Now, they didn't quite close the door of the bus surrounded by a fence and bars, so being the smart engineers that we were, we pondered telling them about the security hole in the contraption, but eventually, I think that they figured it out.

We went into the lion enclosure first, and could you believe it... we saw a hungry and pissed off lion ready to run after the van. I could tell because he was staring intently on the trees next to the bus.

Then there was the tiger exhibit, which wasn't too exciting, but balanced out the fun that we had in the bear exhibit. There was two kanoodling bears that were bickering over some spicy Indian food. They quickly dropped their conversation and decided to come up to the bus and sniff us to see if we were good for dessert. I should have tapped this guy on the nose.

Later we went to the sloth bear enclosure on foot. I guess that malfed animals are really more lively than lazy well kept animals, because this guy came over to see us too. There were only about 10 feet between us and I wasn't sure that he couldn't jump over the 6 foot wide moat to come visit us more closely, so when the sloth bear jumped up on his hind legs, Abhijit and I bolted like lightning, leaving Prajakta at the edge of the enclosure. Needless to say, she was unphased by the animal's inquisitive actions and turned to us with the words "he's not going to get out". Hey, all I have to say, is that if he did get out, he wasn't going to get me. I was also practicing my sprinting skills on a 30 degree, 90% humid day under the Indian sun. You can never let an opportunity like that go.