CHAPTER FIVE
The St. Louis Zoo is in the middle of Forest Park, and it’s a major attraction of the city. Free parking, free admission, and all the animals you could ever want to see. They charge the price of a firstborn for food, but hey, we had a nice big pancake breakfast before we got there.
The grounds at the zoo entrance are landscaped with fragrant purple flowers, swaying wild grasses, and decorative concrete in pink and red swirls. When you walk up to the air-conditioned Living World Welcome Center, with its green metal gables and wind-worn stone reliefs of animals sticking out of the friezes, it’s like walking into a colorful place where animals rule and humans don’t matter.
The last time I was here, I chaperoned my son Marcus’s fifth grade field trip. One of the kids—who grew u
