For exhibition
Mid-morning Oxbear and Patience are dropped with Gloria for the six-hour road trip to Tahlequah, Oklahoma... Patience wheels her magenta suitcase to Gloria's car while curious neighbor girls stare at her from next door... lingering hugs from the nine year-old... “Can't you come too? There's room...”
But I'm with the boys this weekend for whatever crazy they cook... beginning with Yali loading a small fish tank with an entire roll of detached “admit one” tickets in red... then tossing them skyward while jumping off the back of the couch for slow-mo video capture... then reloading the tank and tossing them again... and again...
But he's missing the presence of a little sister to nag and tease... so after lunch I drive him towards the city for a visit to Forest Park...“Cuban Landscape with Rain” playing on the radio as we enter the highway...
The early afternoon is already spiking some heat... walking the lake Yali decides by the time we reach a shady grove of bluebells that the Zoo sounds like a better and better idea...
Walk west and up... through the metal detectors and into a light crowd... “What do you want to see first?” // “Snakes!” … of course...
Those danger noodles are busy that afternoon... one of them seems to take a peculiar interest in Yali... one “ocellate mountain viper” from Turkey... following his finger back and forth through the glass...
Awhile later and after the giant tortoises... back into the spring world suddenly cast over with a great dark cloud... as we pause to watch a monkey running races in a network of rope ladders being watched by a very large family of Mennonite children all dressed in electric blue (which is beginning to feel somewhat like a double exhibit)... grumble of thunder from the dark cloud...
Sky breaks open as Yali and I find sparse shelter under a slatted walkway... but Yali doesn't care... “This is the best visit to the Zoo!” he declares... holding his arms open to shedding waters...
Some ten minutes later the rainstorm moves east and we walk to the leopards... the bored beast sits on a great rock entirely disinterested in its audience... stretches (to the amusement of the zoo-goers)... shakes raindrops out of its coat... then flops itself back down on the rock and proceeds to groom its legs... as if it hadn't just already had a bath from the sky...
Yali is ready to examine the plush animals in the gift shop... he has plans to visit the snakes... doesn't take long to identify the one calling his name... a fat yellow and brown nope rope which he names “Banana Pudding” as we walk back to the car under spring sun...
Home is for a creative rush of ideas as Yali prepares an Amazon cardboard box for a diorama... he pulls paints and brushes and scissors and glitter cloth and rubber cement and tape and minifigs to create Jesus walking on water... until he realizes that his Jesus minifig is missing... the frustrated artist tears around the house looking for him... but Jesus is still lost...
Little Caesars and “Fantastic Mr. Fox” temporarily distracts from disappointment... especially when the M&M brownie knocks his already loose tooth a little more loose...
But as the credits roll he remembers Jesus again and spends a feverish half-hour researching minifig pieces online to recreate Jesus from scratch...
Puck then drives out to John's at seven-thirty...
...as Oxbear and Patience call in after a plate of Mexican nachos at a local restaurant... ready to stomp it up in the morning...