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Thursday, When Jao Discovered a Mastodon and a Cheeseburger

 "It's a Thursday!" we said
as if that explained anything.
"Let's go out to the Desert Museum!"

And since it was a Thursday,
and Jao was going visit us
as he does on most Thursdays,
we drove west across the Mighty
Tucson Mountains, which are mountains
only in contrast to the Sonoran Desert
all around.

Hardly had we entered the grounds
when a docent came armed with a barn owl
who had likely been injured in such a way
that it could not be set loose upon the world.

Just to even things out,
we turned Jao loose upon the Museum,
which did not last long.
He preferred the push cart seat
until we came to the tortoise exhibit.
He won a protracted
Republican-style debate
about whether they were
tortoises or turtles,
and we finally conceded
that all the signs were wrong
and that they were turtles.

He demonstrated
that the path of evolution
may have been more variable
that even Darwin imagined.

 

Jao marveled at the mastodon bones,
wondering where the critter's head was.

His favorite exhibit of the day
was the cafeteria
where he demonstrated that
a cheeseburger is not really a cheeseburger
after you remove the bun and the cheese
and impale the patty on a plastic fork.



I managed to stop 
at the hummingbird pavilion
while Jao and Mari explored
the wildlife at the gift shop.  
Docents at the hummingbird enclosure
spend most of their time trying to stop
people trying to take selfies 
with the nesting birds.  


Most of the animals at the Desert Museum
were visitors from foreign countries
such as Minnesota and North Dakota,
extricating themselves from the shells of their cars,
semi-content at being able to see
what was probably a paw
of the mountain lion
around the corner of a rock,
and a Mexican wolf snoozing in the sun.

A cactus wren in the parking lot
gave constant orders to everyone,
and everyone ignored them.
No matter!


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