I would imagine that if anyone ever bothered to ask me how to keep the ol’ snark skills sharp, I’d tell them to find places that breed snarkiness. For some it might be watching fat people at a buffet, or a gaggle of soccer moms in track suits in a park (question: why are they always wearing work-out clothes, but never working out?) or one of those religious services where people praise the Lord and then writhe around on the floor. You know, whatever get your snark juices flowing. For me it’s the zoo. I mean, there’s the poo throwing, the screeching, the mating dances, and crotch picking galore. And then there are the animals.
One sunny afternoon, not long after Fabio and his man buns had depleted my snark reservoir, I decided to recharge myself and see what the Honolulu Zoo had to offer. I was not disappointed.
I’m not there 10 minutes when I see a guy dangling his toddler into an exhibit. He is trying to put his tiny daughter on the back of an enormous, dusty Galapagos tortoise. This isn’t quite on par with climbing in the pit and trying to hug the Panda or putting your child on the back of an elk in Yellowstone or anything, but literally in front of this exhibit, and there is no way to have accessed said exhibit without seeing this sign which reads “CAUTION: TORTOISES BITE.”
Moreover, the herd (I dunno, do you call animals that move that slowly a herd? I mean, would you say, there goes that freewheeling herd of sloths?) of tortoises are eating leafy vegetables and fruits, and they eat very much the way I do. Locate food, roll eyes back into head, open mouth wide, gulp and swallow, ask questions later. Moreover, there’s half a watermelon, easily the size of this toddler’s head and I mean, could you really blame the tortoise if he did mistake this kid for a melon? Not to mention, these are not particularly clean animals. It’s like someone opened up a college dorm room dustbuster and emptied four years worth of the contents all over them: dust and flies and other bits of refuse abound. Is this really the photo-op you were looking for? Oh honey, remember the time little Jennie got typhus? Wasn’t that fun!
I make a low, disgusted noise in my throat and move on, pleased with this scene, only a tad remorseful that I couldn’t get a pic of Dad, child and the sign in one frame. Just take my word for it. Tortoises bite, okay?
Onto the hippos. I like hippos. A lot. Even after that hippo bit that woman in half last year, I still maintain that it probably wasn’t the hippo’s fault. The Honolulu Zoo has a particular good Hippo exhibit where you can see under the water and on land, and instead of having the normal, fat happy lazy hippos which loll around like uninteresting logs in the water; this zoo has active, playful hippos fighting over a white ball. Did you just get the mental picture? Yeah, I thought so. It’s just like Hungry Hungry Hippos! And these two juggernauts are really going for broke, crashing against the glass in pursuit of this ball. This alone makes the price of admission worth it. I stand here spellbound for who knows how long, until one gladiator-sized hippo soundly trounces the other in the quest for the white ball and the other storms off to sulk.
Feeling satiated, much like a fat, happy lazy hippo, I meander along the random jungle animals exhibits. I approach a little gravel bridge where I can see 3 or 4 snickering pre-teens hunched over an exhibit. This can only mean one thing, for what else would hold the attention of 3 or 4 pre-teens for more than 10 seconds? Obviously, two animals are getting it on. And sure enough, there are two Gharials (nasty looking reptiles that look like crocodiles with pale creepy eyes and elongated bodies. They’re just downright creepy. I mean, even if watching animals get it on were your thing, you wouldn’t pick this species). Of course, I’m not a pre-teen in my hormone heyday, so after eavesdropping on a discussion that walks the line between being naively moronic and deeply upsetting, I move on, decidedly sketched out by the fascination of reptiles knocking boots.
This is a good zoo, don’t get me wrong, it’s big and spacious, but even it can’t escape the fact that its major clientele is children. Zoos are children magnets; I know that, it comes with the territory. And it’s not really the children I blame, it’s their parents. I know that when you were children your parents, much like my own saintly beacons of parenthood, kept you all in line with various methods, maybe threats, maybe little mind games (hey guys, you want to play the quiet game? Starting…now! I was so freaking competitive as a kid, but not too bright, as I always fell for that one), my point is, we didn’t run around screaming like little monsters. We didn’t go banging on the glass of the tiger enclosure or our parents would quietly remind us that it was just a quick throw over the glass into the tiger’s cage.
I dunno, maybe it’s that families nowadays have 2 parents and 6-8 kids (oh hi, did you not get the memo? Earth is overpopulated. Moreover, this is not the industrial revolution and something about your Macy's wardrobe tells me you folks ain’t from a farm, so honestly, why do you need a workforce of children? Keep it nuclear, 2.4 and that .4 can be that weird little fiji mermaid child you keep locked in the attic, that’s fine.)
Then I’m standing in front of the wild Australian dingoes exhibit (yes those dingoes, as in, dingoes ate my baby, dingoes), and there’s a sign that helpfully explains that dingoes mark their territory with urine to let other dingoes know, “hey, I took a leak here, so you might not want to sit there.” Zoo keepers have clearly overestimated the maturity of zoo goers. One need only head over to the gharial exhibit for a reminder.
There is an enormous, fat sweaty man with an even fatter wife and three bloated, sausage-like children, and this enormous, fat sweaty man, clad into a dirty wife-beater, makes an off-color remark in a loud, booming voice about marking his territory. His piggy little wife snickers. I throw up in my mouth a little. In case you can’t tell, I'm not really a fan of this guy. He’s just all around offensive. He is blocking my access way. He is making fun of the dingoes. He and his super-sized family are blotting out the sun and chortling like piglets and generally smelling bad. I try to get around them, but this family has a wonderful way of spreading themselves out over the pathway and loping forward slowly, like a herd of oblivious elephants, so there’s no getting through. So I follow behind them, trapped, listening to Papa Crisco brag about how the tigers weren’t that big (maybe you missed the sign that said, Sumatran tigers, world’s smallest breed of tigers. Snark. Maybe you also missed the part where it said they would still hunt you down and make Kobe beef of you. Snark snark), and then he’s ragging on the “little” alligators (funny, how there were no alligators in the zoo, just gharials, maybe you missed that sign too. Snark snark snark).
I mean, this man is just hating on all the animals, and then from out of nowhere the bushes above our head rustle and the fat man shrieks. I mean really, it’s not quite in the range of helium being let out of a balloon, but it’s enough to send the meerkrats scurrying for cover. From the bushes, a peacock descends, nonplussed, upon Mr. Macho “I ain’t afraid of no pygmy tigers but I scream when I see birds." I snap a pic of this utterly charming avian (see second to last pic) and applaud its good timing. Having seen the peacock though, the man’s reaction is even funnier, instead of being relieved; he’s even more upset that it’s a moderately sized bird and not, say, a Sumatran tiger. He draws his wife in front of him like a shield and babbles on about how peacocks bite. I see my opportunity and sneak by them. Thank you, peacock diversion.
This is yet another stellar feature of this zoo, the grounds have a gang of peacocks roving around, acting persnickety, and looking for hand outs. Before feeding a peacock, I shyly ask the zookeeper at the food pavilion if it’s okay, (or at least its a staff person in a safari shirt, and he says, anything is okay except shaved ice, which does weird things to their poo. Okay, so maybe not a zookeeper, maybe a groundskeeper). I buy a pretzel and plop down. A peacock makes it way over, and looks at me expectantly. It just seems wrong to throw the pretzel bits down in the grass and make him forage for them. He's just too pretty. So I hold out my hand and the peacock takes the pretzel delicately. Although I don’t dig on micro-humans as a rule, I do like well-behaved children as much as the next person, and there are a few around watching me bravely feed the peacock. So to the delight of my little audience, I feed him the rest of the pretzel from my hand, utterly enchanted by his shiny blue plumage, and suddenly I am grinning like an idiot, all those memories of being a goofy, little kid at all the zoos, aquariums, and fairs with my parents comes rushing back and the bad mood brought on by the awful blubbering man dissipates. It's like I'm six years old again dressed in Osh Gosh B'Gosh, life is ridiculously uncomplicated, and all I wanna do is ride the ponies.
I round out the trip with a stroll through the sacred Nene preserve. The sacred Nene, beloved to native Hawaiians, is a pretty, mellow, dark-colored goose which takes me awhile to spot amongst the shade. When I do, it regards me placidly from where it sits upon its nest as if to ask “there, are we all better now?”
Oh shucks yeah.
Don’t get me wrong, I would still throw half of the little buggers running all over to the gharials, given the chance. But I’m just saying. Good times at the zoo. Good times.
No comments:
Post a Comment