While everyone else was getting their hair and nails done in preparation for the big wedding that afternoon, I took advantage of the fact that the National Zoo in Washington, DC, opens its gates at 6 a.m. I arrived at about 7:30. At that hour most of the humans in the zoo seemed to be joggers and zookeepers.

On previous trips to the zoo I had stood in line for thirty minutes or so in order to get a glimpse of one of the giant pandas on the other side of a plexiglass window. On this occasion, in contrast, the male, Tian Tian, was out foraging in his yard and was the focus of the attention of a small group of young ladies with very shapely calves.

The female, Mei Xiang, was still out of circulation taking care of her cub, which was twenty-one days old on the day of my visit, 9/14/24. The zoo’s log of the progress of the mother and daughter, complete with photos and video, can be found here. The sloth bear and her nine-month old cub were out to greet the humans, but they were behind a window, and I was not able to get a decent photo of them.

I wandered over to the compound inhabited by the cheetahs and received a very pleasant surprise.

On several occasions I have seen enclosures for cheetahs in this zoo and others. Most of the time there was no sign at all of the magnificent creatures. On this morning, not only were several of them clearly visible,

they were actually pretty active.

One of them was gnawing on a bone. His (her?) companion once made a run at him — at lightning speed. For a few seconds the spotted pair engaged in a game of high-velocity tag before settling back down. I learned two things:

1. Cheetahs have poor brakes.
2. The tip of this guy’s tail is actually striped.

As I was about to leave, two keepers entered into one of the enclosures and, merely by gently tapping the ground with their enchanted staffs of feline herding, managed to persuade two cheetahs to retreat inside.

Here is a rare view of a lioness that was doing something besides sleeping.

She even did a little grooming.

The male was in the mood for posing.

I forgot to ask this guy what species he was, but he did share the brand of his hair gel.

I took twenty or thirty photos of the two red pandas, which are much smaller than and not related to giant pandas. This was the best one, and it doesn’t even show his face.

The white timberwolf and the grey one interacted almost not at ll. Both were in continual motion.

I took eight photos from above of the fishing cat and her cub. This was the only one that was not focused on the wire mesh that separated us.

The zoo features quite a few Asian elephants. This one startled the crowd by suddenly hurling the beige cube to one side. Incidentally, if you are interested in how much excrement an elephant produces daily, the answer can be found in the restrooms in the Elephant Outpost area.

What could be cuter than a golden lion tamarin?

My recollection is that these little guys were allowed to roam the zoo the first time that we were there, but since a few of them escaped into the surrounding neighborhood, the rest were imprisoned in the Small Mammal House.

I had seen peaceful orangutans before.

One of them began to contemplate the tower in the enclosure.

Before I knew it, they both had scaled the tower and begun to walk across on the cables to the Think Tank on the other side.

Doing tricks along the way.