n a Sunday afternoon. The willow
trees, down by the brook where the otters were plunging, were a cloud of
delicate green. Shrubs everywhere were bursting into bud. The Tasmanian
devils those odd little swine that look like small pigs in a high fever,
were lying sprawled out, belly to the sun-warmed earth, in the same
whimsical posture that dogs adopt when trying to express how jolly they
feel. The Urchin's curators were at a loss to know what the Tasmanian
devils were and at first were led astray by a sign on a tree in the
devils' inclosure. "Look, they're Norway maples," cried one curator. In
the same way we thought at first that a llama was a Chinese ginkgo.
These errors lead to a decent humility.

There is something about a Zoo that always makes one hungry, so we sat
on a bench in the sun, watched the stately swans ruffling like
square-rigged ships on the sparkling pond, and ate biscuits, while the
Urchin was given a mandate over some very small morsels. He was much
entertained by the monkeys in the open-air cages. In the upper story of
one cage a lady baboon was embracing an urchin of her own, while
underneath her husband was turning over a pile of straw in a persistent
search for small deer. It was a sad day for the monkeys at the Zoo when
the rule was made that no peanuts can be brought into the park. I should
have thought that peanuts were an inalienable right for captive monkeys.
The order posted everywhere that one must not give the animals tobacco
seems almost unnecessary nowadays, with the weed at present prices. The
Urchin was greatly interested in the baboon rummaging in his straw.
"Mokey kicking the grass away," he observed thoughtfully.

Down in the grizzly-bear pit one of the bears squatted himself in the
pool and sat there, grinning complacently at the crowd. We explained
that the bear was taking a bath. This presented a familiar train of
thought to the Urchin and he watched the grizzly climb out of his tank
and scatter the water over the stone floor. As we walked away the Urchin
observed thoughtfully, "He's dying." This somewhat shocked the curators,
who did not know that their offspring had even heard of death. "What
does he mean?" we asked ourselves. "He's dying," repeated the Urchin in
a tone of happy conviction. Then the explanation struck us. "He's
drying!" "Quite right," we said. "After his bath he has to dry himself."

We went home on a crowded Girard Avenue car, thinking impatiently that
it w