Aisha and I celebrated my official vaccinated status by going to the Franklin Park Zoo in Dorchester. Because if I’m going back out into the world, why not start with the zoo? The park was operating at limited capacity, so we bought timed tickets online in advance.
It’s wild that Franklin Park Zoo is smack-dab in the middle of the city. It comes out of nowhere. As we were approaching and the GPS was saying that we were only 4 minutes away, I was like, “Where? How?” And then BAM — there’s the zoo!
Franklin Park Zoo has some adorable animals. I loved seeing the giraffes and zebras, and the lions and tigers (no bears, oh my). The prairie dogs were very cute and yippy. A few exhibits were under major construction or only partially open, I’m guessing, because of Covid times. For example, the hyenas were MIA. And there was a whole big flight cage with what appeared to be only one or two vulture-ish birds inside. Like, no shade to the vultures, but did they really need a whole flight cage to themselves?
One thing I wasn’t expecting was the peacocks that were freely roaming the zoo. I’m glad they weren’t confined to a cage, but they were very screamy and kind of scary. They weren’t putting up with anyone’s nonsense!
The zoo also has what I can only describe as a “90s Jurassic Park” vibe. Not that there were any dinosaurs. But there was a safari jeep for kids to play in (pre-Covid… it’s now closed off), and some structures looked like they hadn’t been painted since the 90s either.
The most tedious part of the zoo was waiting in line to get into the indoor Tropical Forest exhibit, which only allowed certain number of people inside at a time for social distancing. We almost gave up, but it turned out to be worth the wait because it was our favorite exhibit. Not only were there pygmy hippos, but there was a fresh BABY pygmy hippo, which is maybe the cutest animal in the world. There was also a baby gorilla but the gorillas in general were staying far away from the glass and people, understandably so. It looked like an open-air version of the Tropical Forest exhibit was under construction beside the indoor one. Thank goodness!
But probably my favorite part of the zoo was how it wasn’t busy at all, and that’s likely thanks to the timed ticket requirement. On an overcast May Sunday in any other year, we might’ve not seen as many animals as we did, or we might’ve had to wait and wade through even more people. Limited crowds is one perk from Covid times that I hope sticks around for a little bit longer.