norman oklahoma

I love the way towns in America make great character names. Norman is the home of the University of Oklahoma (Go Sooners!), the National Weather Centre and he has red telephone boxes. He also has the Fred Jones Jr Museum of Art, which got given America's biggest ever French Impressionists bequest in 2000. Ed Harris lives in him, and Harris is not the only one.

Do not mistake Norman for Tulsa, Oklahoma's second largest city. The former Oil Capital of the World now hosts Oklahoma's only free-standing aquarium.* More importantly, the Tulsa Zoo and Living Museum is America's Favourite Zoo. Who gets to make this prestigious award? It is Microsoft, as you'd imagine. When they were promoting their game Zoo Tycoon 2 in 2005, they did a survey. The place does sound good, but what really interests me here is Zoo Tycoon 2. What are you supposed to do in this game? Catch the most animals? Arrange monkey tennis?

Ok, I have now checked. I was pretty much right. You can also adopt animals and change their skins, get expansion packs with rampaging dinosaurs and exhibit extinct beasts.


* I assume this means 'freestanding public aquarium', or this is a much more extraordinary fact than Wikipedia gives it credit for.