It was a decently productive weekend for me. Saturday, I went with Lydia and Jeff to the zoo! We briefly saw a panda walking away from us and then watched another one sleep for a while. My favorite part was when the girl behind us got excited to see it stick it's tongue out and her friend responded with "Yeah, pandas have tongues..." Instead of posting lame pictures of sleeping pandas, I would like to share these wonderful pictures from the gift shop with you all. They had an insane amount of panda merchandise.
We learned that a cheetah can run 23 feet in one second.. which is also only ONE STRIDE. We were a little freaked out about it. However, I was much more intimidated by the evil looking emu that was trying to eat its way out of its pen.
Next, we learned A LOT about sloths. We saw a few sleeping in boxes that seemed much too small for them but a zoo worker informed us that they are related to armadillos and can curl up into tight little balls. They spend all day sleeping in the boxes until the annoying little monkeys they share a cage with come into the box with them. The sloths then get really annoyed and sloooowly move to somewhere else to sleep. THEY MOVE 15 FEET IN ONE MINUTE. Quite different from cheetahs.. Also, they move so slowly that moss grows on/bugs live in their fur... it's helpful because the bacteria that this produces can be used as a defense mechanism. Basically, they can scratch predators and the cut will get really gross and infected. No animal tries to attack a sloth twice. Also, they only poop once a week because of their digestive systems and 30% of their weight is usually made up of undigested food sitting in their stomachs. ALSO if they get injured, they can redirect their energy to healing!! SERIOUSLY. Final fact: They are much more agile when swimming because their claws get in the way of their walking. Basically, sloths are about 93485 times cooler than I thought.
See hilarious swimming sloth video below:
Aaaand I'm done with my sloth tangent. Moving on..
We went to the National Cathedral after the zoo. I really liked the stained glass and the strange gargoyles. Jeff informed me that one of them looks like Darth Vader. I highly recommend going there if you haven't yet!
Today, everyone went to Chinatown to see the celebrations for the Chinese New Year (which was a week ago). It was crowded and gross.. all of the melting snow had created streams of muddy water for me to jump across in my new, light pink shoes (Poor planning, Lilly. Poor planning.). Afterwards, some of us (me, Lydia,
and Jeff) decided to go see a few more monuments. It may have been cloudy and wet all day.. but it was semi-warm! We visited the TJ (Thomas Jefferson) and FDR monuments/memorials/whatever. I couldn't help but wonder why TJ looked so much like the Crypt Keeper in his statue. Here's the deal: TJ was born in 1743. The statues was added in 1947. I have decided that the statue's appearance was based off of what TJ would have looked like at the time.. Approximately 200 years old.. Seriously. Just look at him! Couldn't we make a statue of TJ that looks dashing and not like John McCain's wrinkled old mug?
Peace and Love,
Lilly
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