More Than Just Animals on This Zoo Tour

Dan Ward is a big fan of the San Diego Zoo, not so much for its 750 species of animals but for its more than 5,000 species of plants.

Not too many people are aware of the zoo’s botanical treasures because they think of the place in terms of elephants and lizards and koalas, Ward says. And even for those persons who cultivate a passing interest in plants, the enormity of the zoo’s botanical collection simply overwhelms them. Think of it. When’s the last time you noticed the rare banana plants, those flowering peach trees, the 100 different kinds of palm trees and the 500 species of orchids?

So Ward, who is a professional landscape horticulturist, has come up with a gimmick to help zoo visitors better appreciate the zoo’s plant life. It makes him a buck, too, but what the heck.

Ward, who is 29, runs “Offshoot Botanical Tours,” which are two-hour guided walks, not only through the zoo but the rest of Balboa Park and even through Presidio Park.

“We have a whole world of plants in San Diego that nobody knows about,” Ward said. “You can spend a day in Balboa Park and never really notice that you’re walking by very rare species.”

The tours cost $4 for adults and $1 for children (plus the cost of admission to the zoo, if that’s where you’re going). Since there’s so much to see at Balboa Park, he offers theme tours -- “Explore Palm Canyon,” “Discover the Wild Side,” “Desert Garden Wonders” and so on.

He began the business a year ago, and has since been written up in Sunset and San Diego Home and Garden magazines. He has attracted garden clubs, children’s groups, senior citizens, college horticulture students and fellow landscapers who are new to town and want to familiarize themselves with what grows locally.

He’s got the permission of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department (he fertilizes the city’s coffers with 10% of his gross revenue), and the zoo folks have no problem with him--even though they offer their own four-hour “behind-the-scenes tour” called “Zoo Nurseries: Growing Plants and Primates.”

Ward says that even though there have been weeks when no one has signed up for a tour, he’s received enough positive feedback to keep him going. “It’s fun to watch people’s faces light up when I show them a rare plant and to hear them say, ‘Oh, wow, I didn’t know that!’

“There are lots of distractions on my tour in the zoo, though,” he said. “There are lots of people walking by, and then, there are those animals.”

Feat of Clay

The challenge of dining in La Jolla can be in first finding somewhere to park. In the 5700 block of La Jolla Boulevard there are no less than three restaurants: Bully’s, Clay’s Texas Pit Bar-B-Q and Sea Thief, and parking is at a premium. One parking lot has the prominently displayed sign, “Parking for Sea Thief Patrons Only.”

You’ve got to figure at least one of the cars in the lot was cheating--the ’84 Mercedes-Benz with the personalized license plate, “CLAY BBQ.”

No More Ribs

San Diego’s garbage collectors threw a party last Friday for William “Cookie” Taylor, who’s retired after 29 years of picking up trash. They chipped in to buy him a video cassette recorder and celebrated his retirement with a barbecue.

A barbecue was the obvious form of partying; among the reasons Cookie will be missed, his friends say, is because of his penchant for throwing monthly Saturday afternoon barbecues in the city utility yard on Morena Boulevard where the garbage trucks are parked.

“He’s the happiest guy you’d ever hope to meet,” said supervisor Dick Tato. “We have to work about 10 Saturdays a year, and on those days when the guys finished their runs, they’d come back and find Cookie in the back parking lot, barbecuing chicken and hot links and ribs. He’d be cookin’ and grinnin.’ ”

No doubt the others were eatin’ and grinnin’.

Endangered Mascot

Have you picked up on the irony that the Navy wants to shoot the goats that populate its San Clemente Island, while the goat is the mascot of the U.S. Naval Academy?

After the Fund for Animals finishes its much ballyhooed rescue and the Navy marksmen finally get their shot at the goats, it may go down as The Great Mascot Massacre.

Sticker Types

Finally, we bring you these snatches of bumper sticker philosophy:

--The older sedan in Escondido with side-by-side stickers. One featured the happy face modified with a neutral smile and the wish, “Have a Normal Day.” The other read, “Yesterday is a Memory, Tomorrow is a Vision, Today is a Bitch.”

--On Interstate 15 through the North City was the Ford van with the sticker, “I Believe in Marriage,” alongside the Chevy El Camino with the sticker, “I (heart) Being Single.”

Irreconcilable differences?