Panaewa, HI
August 2007

Hands In Pockets Please

Hosted by Tony

Next: Shea Day

It may come as a surprise to some but the little city of Hilo has it's very own zoo. Panaewa Rainforest Zoo. It's not too big like the San Diego Zoo and well I guess it might be a bit small as far as zoos go. There I said zoo four times.

As we have been cruising with RG this past week or so he's been telling us about some of the adventures he's had working for Travelocity. We started to wonder if he was just a little over confident in his knowledge of what is and isn't hazardous to one's health so we kindly asked him to read the zoo rules before we entered. Though he doesn't take his hands out of his pockets much we were still concerned that he may try to "pet" something and lose a finger.

It wasn't just hot at the zoo on this particular day, it was melting.

Tony & his family were sweating and complaining about the humidity way too much so I grabbed RG & Tiki Jr. and left them sitting in the shade of the gift shop eating ice cream.

Tony whispered that I should watch RG & Tiki Jr. very carefully and I assured him I would. He still looked distressed about letting us go off on our own so we just hurried off as quickly as we could.

As I have mentioned, it is a rather small zoo but it is a nice place. Tony brings the family over here every month or so just for an afternoons amusement. Oh yeah...and it is Free! Kinda takes the wind out of complaining about it's size in my book.

Our first destination was the white tiger Namaste. We had missed his feeding time and hoped he would be someplace we could see him.

As we entered the area RG commented that perhaps the fence really isn't electrified after all and there was no need to stand behind the railing because there was obviously a fence.

I noticed Tiki Jr. silently nodding his agreement with RG and remarked that we surely didn't need to test those theories without Tony around. Sheesh!

We looked around for a few minutes and finally spotted Namaste laying in the shade down by his pond. He was hot and RG was starting to look a bit hot. He was literally sticky like wet paint and I began to worry that he was going to melt here at the zoo. He assured us he was fine.

There are quite a few different types of animals here but on a hot day like this most of them are sleeping and out of site.

This monkey behind us however seemed to be moving around quite a bit. RG commented that this monkey looked rather harmless and perhaps Tiki Jr. would like to shake his paw. Sheesh.

Thus far Tiki Jr. had been taking the photos as we roamed about the place. I later found on the camera this self portrait he had taken when we weren't looking.

It was strange, we went to the petting zoo and there were all kinds of little critters to meet up close like goats and bunnies and even a black swan. RG kept his hands in pockets the entire time and didn't want to pet anything saying very politely that he did not trust tame animals. Hmmm ok.

He was quite fascinated by the Hawaii state bird the Nene Goose. This ones name is Kuhina. The Honolulu Zoo website has some information on the Nene.

I decided it was time to head back at this point.

Fortunately we had survived the entire experience with no mishaps. Tony was relieved when we roamed around the corner.

I looked at him...he looked at me. I looked at both RG & Tiki Jr. and shook my head letting Tony know that we we're ok in spite of them.

We checked out the little gift shop which had all sorts of neat animal toys, books & stuffed animals.

We found a corner to hang out in for a few minutes. Tony's son was tired of sitting in his push contraption and offered it to RG to rest in.

We didn't find too many people wanting there picture taken on this day. I think they were all hot and bothered as the saying goes. Or wait..that's not what that means. Too hot to be bothered is what I meant to say. Ahhmmm.

(Photos: Tony V./ Dialogue: Tony V.)