At high noon on a sweltering weekday, I hopped in my car and fled the concrete canyons of downtown. Five minutes later I was in another world. Africa. Asia. The North Pole. Even the sign at the entrance sounded like an adventure: "Welcome to the Cincinnati Zoo."

The parking lot was packed with cars from Illinois, Tennessee, Indiana, Kentucky and all over Ohio. I stepped out of my own car and that exotic zoo smell hit me like an Earthling landing on Animal Planet. It's an intoxicating mix of safari adventure: elephants, zebras, lions, giraffes, popcorn and polar bears.

Near the entrance, a peacock was strutting his indigo and turquoise cape that looked like a polyester shirt I owned in the 1970s. Around the corner, two rare trumpeter swans were getting honked off at ducks that swam too close to their tiny swanling, which looked like a floating ball of dirty cotton. Mr. and Mrs. Swan sounded like a flock of clowns with bicycle horns.

As I walked around the pond, I spotted elephants through the trees and heard them trumpeting like air escaping from a very large pinched balloon. "What if?'' I wondered. "What if I saw something like that without a few strands of wire separating us?''

No wonder Tarzan was so good at climbing trees.

The Massai Giraffe - 17 feet tall, including 16 feet of tongue - drew a large herd of North American scarlet-faced rug runners, so I visited the lonely Okapi, which looks like a zebramulecow designed by a corporate diversity committee.

Nearby, a bald eagle sat on a nest like a tree-fort, looking like a commercial for America.

I saw an albino Burmese python that looked like 30 feet of fire hose, and white lions sleeping in the shade like house cats. "Let's not call it anything," a frazzled woman shouted to a rowdy group of kids. "Let's just say he's cleaning himself."

There are some interesting homo sapiens at the zoo, too. At the gorilla exhibit, I met Charlie and Janet Newton, volunteers who have answered visitors' questions for more than 20 years.

Their favorite "office" is a shady spot near Colossus and the gorilla gang they know the way most of us know our relatives.

Janet explained why gorillas walk on their knuckles - to protect their sensitive palms for food gathering - and Charlie rounded up a couple of kids to try on the "Gorilla Shirt" that has a 42-inch neck and 38-inch sleeves. They kids fit with room to spare.

"When I was a little boy, we lived near the zoo, and I would spend my summers here," Charlie chuckled. "I never paid. I would crawl under the fence. So now I'm paying them back."

These are just the kind of people that make Cincinnati the friendly family town it is. Without volunteers like them, the zoo would not be one of the best in the world.

Where else can you stand close enough to count the teeth on a lion without feeling like jungle "takeout"? Where else can you see strange plants and flowers that make even an ordinary Ohio cardinal sound like a bird of paradise?

I used to take my kids to the zoo, but they grew up and I forgot what a treasure it is. The other day I found out you don't need to be a kid to go - but you will be one again when you leave.

E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.