How Green Becomes Wood

"I believe so," Dark said, carefully taking the map from Alec before handing it back right-side up,"I know they have a brown bear and a polar bear. There was another type, but I do not know for sure."

"They're all bears to me, although once we went on a trip with Cooger to the Smoky Mountains and a bear walked up while we were outside. That scared the hell out of me," Daizi admitted.
 
"If it's black, fight back, if it's brown, hug the ground, if it's white, pray to the heavenly light," Xander quoted.

"Although any of them could totally turn us into cub dinner if they wanted," Alec mused, studying the righted map. "That way. Down that path. That sounds utterly terrifying, Mama."

"Did Ba take it on?" Xander asked.
 
"No, I did not fight a bear," Dark said flatly, the shade from his hat just barely disguising his pleasure that his son thought that was a possibility even in jest.

"Your father has only done that in very specific clubs," Daizi added sagely, "He did scare it off that particular one by making himself larger than it."
 
Dark looked curiously at Xander and then slowly held his wrist limp to indicate the sorts of clubs they were referring to.

"Night clubs, Xander," Daizi grinned, not seeing her husband's hand gesture.
 
Xander still didn't get it. "I'd guessed they were night clubs," he said. "Most of those type are." He looked at Dark's limp wrists, utterly confused. He was thinking of boxing clubs, the kind that were probably illegal.

Alec sniggered, understanding. "I find that very hard to imagine, Ba, but, then again, you didn't have a life before us and teaching school. That's just how it works with parents," he teased.

"Alright, what am I missing?" Xander demanded, but if anyone answered, he did not hear because he had just caught sight of the animal exhibit they were approaching. "What is that?" he asked, not believing his eyes.
 
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It was a hard-fought battle to not laugh at Xander's confusion, and one barely won. "It was a gay club, Xander," Daizi told him, despite it falling on deaf ears.

"I do not know if I ought to be offended by that or not," Dark told Alec, deeming this Sad Dad hat was destroying his street cred. Then, looking at the horses, he very casually said, "Oh, I do not know. Nothing important, surely, we should just keep going, right Xander?"
 
"No way!" Xander said stoutly. He crutched so fast he almost fell over as he tried to find a good spot to see the horses better. He leaned on the fence meant to separate the visitors from the exhibits and stared in wide-eyed awe. "Takhi! Przewalski horses!" he breathed. "Look at them! Living history."

The short, stocky horses seemed plain enough with their dun coats and darker manes and tails, but part of their visual intrigue was the way their top halves were significantly darker than their lower halves, much like the coloration seen on many fish or birds. Their solid heads and pert little ears gave them an eternal solemn yet attentive look even as they ignored the people ogling them.

"I think it might take us longer to get him to move than it did to get Ivy to leave the dolphins," Alec told Dark.
 
"That is okay," Dark said in the little way he did when he was immensely pleased to have brought joy to one of his children, "We can wait."

"What is special about them? What makes them living history?" Daizi asked curiously, since she was unable to see what made them different from any other horse.
 
Xander took a deep breath, and Alec grinned, leaning on the fence to watch him. It was not common to see Xander allow himself to be openly excited about something, especially to this level.

"The Przewalski Horse, also known as the Takhi, is one of the oldest breeds of horse known. We've got records of what seem to be the Takhi as far bas as 900 AD, and it is considered to be the last remaining wild horse, though some people debate the truth in that claim. If the claim is true, then is a wild horse as opposed to a feral horse like the Australian Brumby or the American Mustang. Most interestingly, if you dig back in the genetics of their ancestry, they aren't the same as a modern horse. They had the same ancestor once upon a time, but unlike what was once believed, the Takhi is not the ancestor of the modern horse or the other way around.

"Some of them were once used on the Mongolian steppes by soldiers, most famously by Genghis Khan, but plenty of others, too. Unfortunately, starting in the late 1700s, idiots started hunting them like they were deer or something, and driving them away. The individuals that were captured and domesticated were crossed with other breeds, and then with livestock and farming and rough winters, the wild herds disappeared by the 1900's. The last wild horse was spotted in the 1960's, and no expeditions found any sild Taki after that. Thankfully, the idiots that ran around shooting and capturing the Takhi did do one thing right: they put some of the captured horses in zoos, and a few private owners kept a line pure. Unfortunately, the few number of horses and the difficulty in sharing genetics meant there was a massive bottleneck, and the population in captivity declined to only twelve left after the 1950's. Twelve!

"People realized they didn't want to literally watch another species die, so they started putting in the effort to spread things around, and it didn't take long before the horses got a genetic boost, and things got better for them. Different groups have tried reintroducing them into the wilds where they belonged, but it wasn't going well for a while. They kept trying, though, and slowly, one by one, different herds across China started reproducing. 2026 marked the first foals born in Kazakhstan in over 200 years! Today, the wild herds are strong and doing really well, but the breed is still considered endangered, and zoos continue to do breeding efforts to make sure that there's a nice amount of genetics so inbreeding doesn't happen again if something happens again."
 
Daizi listened to every single word with rapt attention, asking follow-up questions when she could. Horses weren't really her thing, but they were Xander's, so she wanted to listen to as much as he could say about them. And nobody could say she wasn't great at asking questions.

Unfortunately, Ivy did not find the lecture as interesting as her mother and the nearby patrons seemed to, as since she now had a full belly, she was quickly beginning to fall asleep in her stroller. Dark, meanwhile, tried to take covert photographs of Xander: there wasn't a good place to sit to draw, but he wanted to be able to do so later. Plus, he assumed Xander would like to have pictures of himself in front of his horses.

When it seemed like Daizi was starting to struggle to come up with new questions, one of the zoo employees came up to Xander and said, "You really know your stuff, that's impressive."
 
Xander didn't know everything about the Przewalski Horse, but he was able to answer most of Daizi's questions, and he took great pleasure in doing so. He didn't mean to lecture. He hated standing listening to lectures, and here he was giving one. It just sort of came out.

Alec was happy to listen, though he had no questions of his own, and watched Xander happily. When the zoo employee came up, Alec straightened, and Xander seemed to come back to Earth from wherever he had been.

"Um. Thanks," he said, suddenly a lot less oratorical. "They are... horses are cool."
 
Xander glanced at the Takhi peacefully grazing in their small herd. "It's easy to get excited about something rare and cool. But I'm not... you know... it's that..."

Alec put his arm around Xander and told the employee, "My dear brother doesn't realize how cool he is sometimes. Or how smart!"
 
"Well look," The employee said, "We run a summer program of teenage volunteers. We assign them an animal based on a shortlist they provide of what they're interested in, and then they get to do talks and other enrichment activities. It might be something to look into."
 
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