If you do this place properly then you’ll be walking around for 4-5 hours so you need to pace yourself. This is a proper zoo, there are no rides or rollercoasters or anything like that, it’s all animal attractions and feeding shows.
I’m watching a zookeeper feeding the giraffes at the moment and he’s a funny looking fella (the giraffe I mean, not the zookeeper). He’s got two bony tufts coming out the top of his head and his neck is longer than his legs. I think God must have run out of proper necks so he thought sod it, nobody will notice if I use a leg instead. But then he came to the snakes and what happened? He had no legs left! So he ordered a big box of spare ones and when he got to the end of the week he still had loads of them left, so he just stuck them all on the millipedes to get rid of them. That’s how I think it happened.
The Snowdon Aviary
The first time people see the Snowdon Aviary they immediately think of that scene in Jurassic Park where they nearly get pecked to death by pterodactyls. Once you’ve pushed open the heavy metal door and parted the curtain of chains it’s just you and two hundred birds inside a giant wire mesh. Luckily the birds all seem to be quite friendly. It’s just a load of ducks and gulls and cranes and a few pigeons that must have flown in through the door and can’t get out. I quite like the idea of pigeons posing as zoo animals.
There’s another big bird exhibit called the Blackburn Pavilion which always makes me think of Jules Verne and his factory contraptions: imagine tropical birds and Victorian steam punk. It’s all red wrought iron and green steel with a tumbling waterfall inside.
Butterfly Paradise
Butterfly Paradise sounds like one for the kids but it’s actually one of my favourite exhibits. It’s a big tented tunnel filled with jungle ferns and millions and bazillions of butterflies. They are literally all around me, flittering past my face and head and hands, landing on your arms, on your hair… and then straight into a poor toddler’s face who promptly bursts into tears. Of all the scary animals they’ve got in the zoo it was the butterflies that made her cry.
Reptile House & Rainforest Life
You might want to skip the Reptile House if you’re scared of snakes because they’ve got boas, cobras, pythons, vipers and sidewinders all wound around tangled knots of wood. If you like bugs (who doesn’t like bugs?) then you’ll love the Bugs House. This place is full of flies, fleas, crickets and cockroaches… all of the stuff that you’d normally step on. They’ve also got a room thick with spiderwebs if that’s your idea of fun.
Rainforest Life is pretty cool because it looks like a jungle habitat. As soon as you enter this two-storey room you’re immediately hit by the steam and heat being pumped out of the pipes. It’s a bit like walking straight into a sauna, but one that’s full of spindly little branches that trail up the walls for the monkeys to climb on and clamber over, jumping from branch to branch above your head. They balance on the balcony and run along the banisters five feet from your face. Every now and then another warm cloud of spray will come out of the pipes to keep the atmosphere hot and humid and it gets quite oppressive after a while. I’m glad I’m not a monkey.
The scariest room in the zoo is definitely the Nightlife exhibit downstairs. If you want to confront your fears then this is the place to do it because they’ve got rats as big as dogs, moths as big as birds, and big bats hanging off the vines like long socks on a washing line. All you can hear is the scurrying sound of feet that seem to be coming from the corners of the floor. They send it out the speakers so you’re not sure whether rats have been let loose in the room… and it’s too dark to see!
Gorilla Kingdom
The gorilla is definitely my favourite animal. I’ve been standing here for a good twenty minutes now and I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re actually hairy humans in disguise. Everything they do, from the expressions on their face to the way they sit, stand up, pick at their nails and scratch the side of their face, is exactly the way that we would do it. You can almost read their minds from the expressions on their faces. I think one guy has resigned himself to his fate because he doesn’t look very happy today.
I’ve got a theory that monkeys don’t actually like bananas and the reason they eat them all the time is because that’s all we give them: it’s either bananas or starve. But the truth is that they are sick to the back teeth of eating bananas 365 days a year and that is why he is sitting here staring at me like a moody teenager. He is saying, please mate, no more bananas for chrissakes. If I eat another banana then I’m going to turn into one. Give me a bowl of Pedigree Chum or something, but not bananas!
Tiger Territory & Land of the Lions
The Tiger Territory is one of the largest enclosures which means there are plenty of places for the tigers to hide. It has taken me about ten minutes of patient waiting before one finally slumps up against the window, literally six inches from my feet. He’s resting his back against the glass and is obviously ignoring me. No I’m not turning round, he says.
The Land of the Lions is styled like the foothills of the Himalayas with a big moat around it (good), big thick concrete walls (good) and some electric fences as well (good idea). There’s supposed to be a family of four or five lions living inside but they’re all stubbornly refusing to move as well, despite much animated encouragement from a school party by the fence. Back in the old days they would train them to sit on a stool and ask one of the dopey school kids to come up and put their head inside their jaws to entertain the crowd – why don’t they bring that back again? Who cares if a few kids got their heads bitten off – that’s showbiz.
Mappin Terrace & Penguin Beach
Mappin Terrace looks absolutely fantastic when you first clap eyes on it because it’s styled like a huge mountain range that rises up about fifty feet and you assume there’s going to be a few brown bears lazing on the summit, but all I can see today are two emus and a wallaby.
My final stop of the day is watching the bird show at Penguin Beach. There’s about a hundred of them waddling around the edge of the pool chasing the keeper and his big bucket of fish, while one of the other keepers is rattling off an excitable speech for the millions of kids sitting in the surrounding stands.
Then it’s off to the shop to buy a stuffed monkey.
If you enjoy this then try Battersea Park Children’s Zoo (take a tube journey from Camden Town to Sloane Square) and SEA LIFE London Aquarium (catch a tube from Camden Town to Waterloo). You’ll find some of the bigger animals at Chessington World of Adventures and live horses at the Royal Mews. If you want to see some stuffed animals and skeletons then try the Natural History Museum