I have to admit I was kind of happy when it started raining Sunday morning.

The Stephen King book I was reading had finally started getting interesting, I had a mountain of laundry to do and most importantly, I really didn’t want to go to the zoo.

That was wishful thinking on my part. My four-year-old had been agitating for a zoo field trip for a few days and she knew it was her last chance to go before another long week of school and work.

“Don’t worry, Mommy,” she said. “I have my boots.”

I thought maybe it was only raining on the Windward side, but a call to a townie co-conspirator confirmed that it was raining in Waikiki, too. While my daughter was out of hearing, we decided to pretend we were going to the zoo, planning all the while to cancel the outing because of rain.

Fat chance. If you tell a four-year-old you’re taking her to the zoo, you’re taking her to the zoo, rain or no rain. We stalled through lunch at a Waikiki restaurant, but from our table next to a plate glass window we could all see that it wasn’t raining hard enough to call off our plans. As soon as the rain let up, she got up, ready to go.

She insisted that that all she wanted to do was visit the Galapagos tortoises and see Berani, the tiger who walked out of his cage a few days ago.

I didn’t really believe her, but I was hopeful until she ran off to the playground near the tiger cage. Then it was too the Keiki Zoo, where it started raining while she played with Duplo toys in the “farmhouse.”

It was just sprinkling, really, so we decided to see the hippos, because she’d talked about seeing the real ones when we passed the statues near the front.

It was there that I realized there are advantages to visiting the zoo in the rain.

The hippos were out and about. Usually we’re lucky if they raise their entire heads from their murky pond and I’m pretty sure yesterday was the first time my daughter saw a full hippo. Even my 11-year-old, who wasn’t thrilled to be slogging around the zoo in the rain was impressed. It had been years since we’d seen them really active.

By time they slid back into the water, it was pouring out, so we decided it was time for us to go – except I couldn’t leave without saying “Hi” to our friends Rusti and Violet. We were treated there, too, since the two orangutans were waiting out the rain in full view.

Since the orangutan enclosure is near the reptile house, we slipped inside to see if the rain would let up. It didn’t, but while we waited, we got to watch a monitor lizard frantically try to scale his glass cage, which was entertaining enough for me to get over my lizard-phobia to cheer on its unsuccessful effort.

Well, I sort of got over my lizard-phobia. As I was contemplating the nightmares I would have in which the lizard actually escaped, the lemurs or gibbons started screaming, and, well, so did I. It was better than Stephen King!

Eventually, we made it out, soaked and happy and willing to consider another rainy day visit… although next time I might actually grab some umbrellas from the car.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 5:00 am and is filed under Family Tree. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.