Painted Dogs

I wanted to talk about everything that happened while proctoring the SAT's yesterday, but I didn't think I could put a good spin on all of it. However, it's easier to put a good spin on it now that I've heard what my day would have been like if I hadn't been needed. I would have been at the zoo.

We wanted to go to the zoo this weekend since both days were supposed to be partly sunny and in the 70's. We always go at 9:00 in the morning when they open because it's less crowded and then come home around nap time to put 2-year-old Emily to sleep. Since I was proctoring yesterday, we went today and it went great. However, yesterday at 9:20 AM the zoo was put on a code-red lock down because the Painted Dogs, which eat animals like deer, got out of where they were supposed to be. That meant that the visitors had to go to the nearest building and remained there for a little over an hour before the Painted Dogs could be caged up.

I suspect that there are usually two or more lines of defense and that the dogs got past one, so hopefully there was no real danger, but I don't know if that was the case or if that was made clear to the visitors in lock-down. We imagined being near the elephant house at that time, which even I, with my severely disabled sense of smell, can sometimes get a whiff of how bad it is, and being locked in there with our three girls for over an hour. As it stands, I'll probably not proctor SAT's again, but I wonder if I would have felt the same way about the zoo if I had been there instead at that time.