Prairie Dog Mountain
The other day, a friend and fellow photographer called me to let me know that he was about to go shoot an indie hip-hop duo at the Houston Zoo. In an of itself, let’s be honest, that just isn’t THAT interesting and in reality, the zoo is a rather tricky place to shoot. It is hard to control the environment and even more difficult to make it look like you aren’t in, well, the zoo. What piqued my interest is that he mentioned that the duo wanted to “borrow” some goats because of some reference to them in the title track of their upcoming album. When I asked my friend what “borrowed” meant, he couldn’t quite explain it and just said that it should be interesting. Fair enough. This is when I am glad that I have a zoo membership. I tagged along. The duo looked pretty fantastical: snakeskin boots and canes and a great deal of swagger. Quite the standouts in a sea of school children on field trips. The goats, if you are curious, are housed in the children’s petting zoo, which is clearly one of the hotspots during the day (as nearly 90% of zoo patrons on a weekday are children under the age of 12) These kids are the perfect demographic for hanging out with goats. And then there was the dynamic duo. These guys were hilarious. They even pulled out a fat roll of bills to try and bribe the employee standing watch over the pen to allow them to go back into the goats private feeding area… No dice.
After they finished shooting, the duo decided that they wanted to take some more images of themselves in the Prairie Dog Mountain. Sure, why not. You have to crawl through tunnels sized for 12 year olds to pop up in these bubbles that allow you to see the prairie dogs from close up. I didn’t pull out the camera until the guys were crawling in the tubes. It was at that moment, that it seemed like the right time to take a couple of unsolicited pictures.
Prairie Dog Mountain:
Now just picture a long snaking line of 8 year olds backed up through the tunnels waiting to peer out of the bubbles. Yikes.
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