Sunday, July 03, 2005

wild kingdom

guess who was on the other end of the line during my first phone call this morning?


i guess he was bothered that i hung up on him yesterday. hope he didn't spend all night agonizing over it- i sure didn't.

actually, my night was spent dreaming of snakes- lots of them. i can trace this back to yesterday's visit to the zoo after work. riverbanks zoo is less than a mile from the radio station, and since i'm a member of the zoo, i can visit anytime i want. (yesterday made twice in two days, which i can't say i've managed before.)

in january 2002, our zoo acquired a pair of male koalas from a japanese zoo. unfortunately, kei was put down (he was quite ill with some sort of intestinal malady) a couple of years ago. (if you follow the link, the one on the left, mirai, still resides at the zoo.) however, before kei's passing, plans to bring female koalas to the zoo had already been made. two females, lottie and killarney, arrived at the zoo in september 2003, so mirai didn't go long without playmates.



and play he did- lottie became pregnant, and gave birth late last year to a baby named karoo. karoo was riding on lottie's back when we last went to the zoo in april- i was lucky enough to get a few pictures (which of course, i cannot locate right now- but i swear they exist) during our visit. unfortunately, karoo was found at the bottom of the koala enclosure in late may.

on a positive note, however, our other female, killarney, is thought to be pregnant.



why bore you with all this? well, when i go to the zoo, the koala exhibit is always the first place i head to, and yesterday was no exception.

aside from the koalas (pictured above), this was one of the sights i beheld:


(i know, i know- it's a little hard to make out, but i was trying to discreetly capture the two-tone mullet, which was a vibrant fuschia on top, and black on bottom. even my haircolors haven't been that adventurous. you're lucky i didn't get a shot from the front....this woman had those pawprint tattoos like eve, but believe me- she was no eve.)

outside of the "koala knockabout" exhibit, there is a palmetto tree. several years ago, local artists painted these large metal palmettos (south carolina's main symbol) and then they were auctioned off for charity. apparently, as a symbol of our sister-state relationship with queensland (which is how our acquisition of koalas was arranged), we sent a palmetto decorated with symbols of south carolina over to queensland, and also shipped over a blank palmetto, which was decorated by an aboriginal artists and returned to us......it now stands outside the exhibit. (the exhibit has been open for three years, and i never knew this interesting little tidbit.)

anyway, here are some other shots from my trip to the zoo........



i thought he was stuck....and that the grunting was how he expressed his pain. then i realized that wasn't a rock under him.



who is on exhibit here? after about fifteen minutes of observation, i really had to wonder.

when a couple of the gorillas were lying down on the ground with their butts pressed up on the glass, the little girl in blue kept smacking the glass- mama encouraged her to "spank" the gorillas. i'm afraid i was more than a little appalled at how many folks were ignorant enough to beat on the glass of various exhibits.....



.......like this guy. he was also at the gorilla exhibit during my visit. he did the glass smackers one better- kicking the glass behind one of the gorillas (he was tired of staring at people, i guess, and had turned around) with his cowboy boot. had he not been twice my size, i would have said something. instead, i followed him to the bird house, where he tried to get the attention of both the hornbills and the penguins by emitting an odd high-pitched whistle. (needless to say, the birds were not impressed.)

i should go to the zoo more often- if only to people watch. not tomorrow, though. my shift is early enough that i might be able to kayak after all.....assuming the weather behaves itself.

10 comments:

D said...

Okay, apparently after hearing the radiofan comments I don't think there's any need to worry about him reading your blog since I guess he's not familiar with the fact that your radio station has a site.
The way people at zoos behave themselves is upsetting enough for me not to go. I also feel sorry for the animals.
If I had been the gorilla, I would have farted at the people.
The turtle-there goes my virgin eyes.

Kal said...

In Boston there's the Franklin Park Zoo. Not much of a zoo, but it's nice enough. We've had a big problem with the primates for a couple of years.

Several years ago some of the monkeys threw excrement at the Mayor while he was having a press conference (now what Mayor doesn't deserve a bit of monkey poop thrown at them...), and just last year we had a gorilla manage to escape and run through a local neighborhood.

One of our local nitwit morning drive D.J.'s got himself in trouble for commenting that the gorilla was a "METCO gorilla looking for a bus". METCO is the program which takes inner city kids and lets them attend suburban schools. Most, if not all, METCO kids are kids of color, so the comment was taken as somewhat racially insensitive.

The D.J. survived though, as he was second in the 25-54 demo in the morning slot.

duff said...

sibling: he doesn't have computer access- i checked. (believe me, if he did, i probably wouldn't be posting his calls.)

kal: had that happened down here, the dj probably would have been tossed into the lion exhibit.

D said...

i was trying to say that he sounds to stupid to work a computer.

Mossy Stone said...

I admire your patience for the tortoise "action" shot.

in...





out...




in...




out...

Larry said...

Mossy, if were drinking milk it would have come shooting out my nose.

I had to go to the zoo here in stl and observe a group of monkeys(I chose the lion tailed macaques) and write a report on them for a biological anthropolgy course I was taking. While watching them the alpha male(his name escapes me at the moment) was masturbating rather furiously with one of his feet up on the glass. A group of four people walked in(the enclosure they occupied was right by the entrance) and he stopped and put his head down like he was sleeping. every so often he would lift his head slightly and open one eye to see where they were. When they finally walked out of his view he resumed his activity as if nothing had happened. I was sitting there with a classmate and we were both on the floor laughing.

duff said...

there was a lot of action at the zoo during my last two visits. in addition to the galapagos tortoises on saturday, i also have a slightly blurred photo of some hot poison dart frog action i hadn't noticed until going back through my photos.

during the field trip, we saw frisky monkeys, lizards, and a different set of turtles were getting a tad friendly.

would you believe hallmark actually puts out a card along those lines? seriously- i have three of them sitting at home, ready to mail to unsuspecting friends.

however, i have yet to witness a masturbating monkey.

Mossy Stone said...

"...this is Marlin Perkins. Next week on 'Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom', watch Jim as he catches some really hot Poison Dart Frog action on his quest to catch the Masturbating Monkey."

bricotrout said...

how are you always so polite to this guy? i get to work and wanna jump down the throat of the first guy that calls, even if it was ed mcmahon with good news.
youre gonna lose it someday, you HAVE to!

duff said...

i've crushed his dreams by telling him i'm happily taken. i've wandered off during an early morning conversation and let a male coworker finish the discussion of my underwear for me (my fan was not amused). i've told him i'm not interested. i've switched radio stations (not because of him, though). yet, he always comes back.

it must be my sparkling wit and personality.