{"id":13123,"date":"2019-04-18T19:36:14","date_gmt":"2019-04-19T01:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/?p=13123"},"modified":"2019-05-02T18:40:02","modified_gmt":"2019-05-03T00:40:02","slug":"dont-judge-a-zoo-by-its-reputation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/2019\/04\/18\/dont-judge-a-zoo-by-its-reputation\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t judge a zoo by its reputation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With wide smiles and skin slightly pinkened by the afternoon sun, my friends and I climbed back into Nora\u2019s\u00a0red Toyota Corolla for the ride home, happy and content. As we began the journey back toward Searcy (after a quick stop for caffeine), we all recounted our favorite moments of the afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m actually really surprised,\u201d Nora said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting it to be so nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had been thinking the same thing.<\/p>\n

Last Friday, some friends and I made a quick trip to the Little Rock Zoo for the afternoon. The inspiration for the journey had struck just a few days previously when two of us had visited the Georgia Aquarium. As we practically ran from exhibit to exhibit with childlike glee, we both realized neither of us had ever visited the zoo less than an hour from campus. It was there, in the middle of an aquarium, that we made plans to visit a zoo two days later.<\/p>\n

In the few days leading up to Friday, I mentioned my plans to several people. The conversations all went the same way \u2014 after finding out we were going to the Little Rock Zoo rather than the Memphis Zoo, they would shrug and say something to the effect of, \u201cOh, it\u2019s OK.\u201d Other descriptors used were \u201csmall,\u201d \u201cfine\u201d and \u201ckind of underwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clearly, the Little Rock Zoo had a lot to live up to for our first visit.<\/p>\n

We had pretty low expectations going into Friday. We knew it would be fun simply because of our company, but we didn\u2019t plan on the zoo being anything too great. Thankfully, we were wrong.<\/p>\n

The Little Rock Zoo deserves much more appreciation than it is given. The animals\u2019 enclosures and habitats are fairly large and well-maintained. We saw almost all of the staple zoo animals \u2014 lions, tigers and bears, oh my \u2014 and we spent well over two hours making our way around to all the areas. As if that\u2019s not enough, there is currently a gorilla infant increasing the zoo\u2019s overall percentage of cuteness by approximately 87 percent, and the funnel cakes are reasonably priced and unreasonably delicious.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s not to love?<\/p>\n

Before visiting the Little Rock Zoo, I had developed an opinion of it based solely on what I had heard from others. I had already determined that it would be run-down and disappointing. That\u2019s the vibe I had gotten from others, so why wouldn\u2019t it be true?<\/p>\n

Forming an opinion on something before having any real knowledge of the matter is unfair. If for some reason we had been unable to go to the zoo last Friday, I would have remained unnecessarily convinced that the Little Rock Zoo was subpar. Judgments should only be made after personal experience and research.<\/p>\n

It may seem clich\u00e9, but the old adage is valid. Don\u2019t judge a book by its cover, and definitely don\u2019t judge a zoo by its reputation.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With wide smiles and skin slightly pinkened by the afternoon sun, my friends and I climbed back into Nora\u2019s\u00a0red Toyota Corolla for the ride home, happy and content. As we…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102,"featured_media":11458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-opinions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13124,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13123\/revisions\/13124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}