On Safari

Since A has a deep love of elephants, oohing and aahing at them whenever they appear on National Geographic, we came up with the idea of a trip to the Safari in Ramat Gan which neither of us had ever visited. The Safari is divided into two parts a large open area where the animals graze freely and a zoo where they don't. Since today coincided with both Xmas and Eidal Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice), many of the visitors were Israeli Arabs, like this family examining an African elephant.


Hippo and friends at the lake on a sunny winter's day. The approximation of a real African lake is pretty convincing. For a moment there you are overtaken by the illusion that you are in , say, Kenya, and not opposite the main road to Jerusalem.

Proximity to so many exotic creatures tends to clear one's mind of the issues of the day. But here and there the attitudes of the animals conjured up our human concerns. For instance, should Israel talk to Hamas or wait for it to declare a unilteral cease-fire? The giraffes seemed to be in two minds.

But these monkeys seemed to be sharing the same opinion.

The silverbacked gorilla mummy was much too busy teaching baby the essentials of life to care.



Of course the Safari is in Israel so there were still plenty of nudniks pecking at the car windows to get attention and put forth their point of view.