Safari, so good as all creatures great and small take to the zoo

Wearing David Attenborough's hat for a quick safari, Frank McNally took to the plains of the Phoenix Park

Wearing David Attenborough's hat for a quick safari, Frank McNally took to the plains of the Phoenix Park

August in the African Plains. The great annual migration is on, as thousands of humans travel from their traditional breeding grounds to this remote area of Dublin Zoo, in the desperate search for entertainment. Many of them carry their young: playful cubs who need huge quantities of diversion if they are to have any chance of surviving the harsh Irish summer.

This time the humans are lucky. Amid the dense vegetation of the zoo's African Plains section, signs advertise the "Nakuru Safari" - a guided tour by jeep-train. It only lasts 25 minutes, but with baby humans, every 25 minutes is vital.

If nothing else, it will be a chance for their exhausted parents to sit down. Right on cue, an adult male is startled by the distinctive, chilling cry of the Kawi-Kawi bird. Yes, it is that stage of the migration where his tired three-year-old offspring is raising his arms and demanding to be lifted, with the words: "Kawi! Kawi!" The jeep-tour has got here just in time.

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You need to suspend incredulity on the Dublin Zoo safari, but not that much. The African Plains section, which doubled the size of the zoo three years ago, is not exactly the Serengeti. And yet in high summer, when the plant-life is lush and the tracks are dusty, it's easy to forget that Áras an Uachtaráin is just behind the hedge.

You don't even have to forget, since some of the Phoenix Park's other attractions only add to the vicarious African travel experience: especially the adjoining polo grounds and the nearby cricket club, where the white settlers play their games.

In the recent dry season, the safari has come into its own. The tour includes a recorded commentary from a camp, Kenyan tour guide. And when he warned last week "eet's going to be sweaty owt dere!" he wasn't wrong.

The safari leaves from "Nakuru village", the mini-complex of visitor facilities which, as the guide correctly points out, is the last village we will see until we return. Then the jeep pulls slowly out of Nakuru and heads for Bongo land. Yes, the bongos - antelopes with camouflaging white stripes to mimic the effect of sunlight through trees - are the first stop, and the first of several endangered species in the African plains, which gives the safari a depressing but educational aspect.

Then it's on past the lions, and the red river hogs (a favourite lion lunch in the wild). Then the cheetahs, and then - over to our left, on islands in "Nakuru Lake" - the white-crowned mangabeys (highly endangered) and chimps.

We round a bend and head uphill on the gravel track, past one of the most famously threatened of all species, the white rhino. And then, opening away to our right, we see the true glory of the African Plains, Dublin-style.

In several acres of savannah, giraffe mixes with zebra, ostrich, and scimitar-horned oryx. It's not quite central Kenya, for all the efforts of the commentator to convince us otherwise.

But it's a rare chance to see several of the world's most exotic animals roaming together in relative freedom. If you're really lucky, the giraffes might break into a run, in that loping, slow-motion style you've probably only seen on wildlife programmes.

The day of our tour, they didn't. And it being early, several species didn't show at all, which may explain why, after a final stop for the hippos, the "25-minute" safari clocked in at a mere 19 minutes.

Short and sweet, but at only €3 per adult and €2 per child, with some reductions, you can hardly complain. There's nothing to stop you repeating the itinerary on foot.

Parents will not escape from Nakuru without a visit to the village restaurant, where human cubs graze happily on french fries, or tear at the carcass of a chicken nugget meal.

Don't ask for straws with your drinks, though: they won't give them out "because they're dangerous for animals".

And in case you're wondering how the animals get hold of them, you would want to have seen the sight last week of a group of happy morons, ignoring the "don't feed" signs, and throwing peanuts, ham sandwiches and an ice-pop into one of the monkey enclosures.

Zoos have their critics, for this and other reasons. But the sad spectacle that was the polar bear show at Dublin Zoo is now closed, happily. And with the possible exception of the gorillas, who always seem overwhelmed by the tragedy of their lives, the place has never looked happier.