Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Yesterday my younger daughter and I took her son to the zoo.  He was fascinated with, in order:  other kids, meercats, giraffes, goats, the gondola, the train ride.  He had a great day, and laughed and clapped his hands a lot.  I was enthralled with, in order:  my grandson, the warthogs, who because it was a cold day were running around like ballerinas, the giraffes, and the baboons.  One baboon was digging a hole, then a fight erupted because perhaps it didn't want to share, and then we swooped our little one year old away, saving for another day the more aggressive behaviors of our distant cousins.  Having just seen "Jane", about the chimpanzees Goodall studied, I didn't really want to be reminded of our human tendency to violence, not eradicated despite the talk of higher animals.  My grandson went home to a nap, and I home to a good book by Sebastian Berry, about the violent settling of the plains in the mid eighteen hundreds.  The fight was over land not digging holes, but was otherwise the same.