Dearest Maroon,
I am back! After a lot of traveling followed by nonstop work after I got off the plane I feel like my brain functionality is that of a five-year-old. Not a smart one. Like the kid who eats paste or tubes of chapstick in kindergarten glass. I will be regaling you with tidbits from the trip, but first I want to mention the Buenos Aires zoo. I know you probably think that I have an unnatural obsession with zoos these days (and I do), but the one in Buenos Aires rules.
This picture here is of a mara, a crazy rabbit-deer hybrid thing a few feet long. They are everywhere in the zoo, lounging on any grassy spot available and I really wanted to grab one and take it home. Also plentiful were the nutria that swim around in the many koi ponds and will come out to eat food from your hand. They sell buckets of animal food at every corner and apparently all of the zoo animals eat the same things (except the sea lions but they sell buckets of small fish to throw to them). The only animals you are not allowed to feed are the big cats and the bears (I suspect the bears could easily get across the shallow moat and maul a person).
The Buenos Aires zoo has been around since about 1875 and has a lot of architecturally beautiful buildings. In the 1800’s they didn’t put the crazy large barriers and moats around all of the animals that one sees today, so you can get really close to all of them. Animal of the day was a pygmy hippopotamus that Brian named Morcilla (because he did look sort of like a blood sausage). He was only about 6 feet from us and was eating all of the food people were throwing on the ground until a group of people starting throw food directly at him. They hit his sides and head a few times and the hippo stopped and turned toward the crowd. He stared for a few moments and then just opened his mouth really wide so that people could throw food directly into his mouth. It was awesome. I died laughing for a few minutes and even when we passed by a little later he was still standing there with his mouth open.
Also of note was a masturbating monkey and in the amazon aquarium section a fish named after me. All of the tanks in that sections had labels above them with the Latin names for all of the fish that resided in them. At the very end of the row, there was just a placard that said ‘Lisa’. Nothing else, just Lisa and a picture of a puffer fish. I will send it to you.
I have to go back to work now but will continue with more later. I miss you!!
Love,
Yolo
I want to see more subway stalker pictures!
Yolo & Maroon 
Oh my god. Do you have a picture of the hippo? I wish so badly that I could see that. I have to tell you that zoos usually make me cry (like the hippie scum I secretly am) but I would really like to see a hippo do that.
I once watched a nature show that was about hippos and these 5 different kinds of fish that perform spa-like procedures on them. One type of fish cleans their teeth, one kind cleans their toenails… it was amazing. And hippos are so mean.
Remember when they killed that Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar? He had a zoo and they rescued or “disposed of” most of his exotic animals but the hippos were too large so they just left them there and figured they would die but instead they thrived so then like, five hippos were out terrorizing the denizens of some small little Columbian village, eating their crops and possibly children.
More pictures!