Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 32
7/28/09
20:10
Welcome back, my friends to the show that never ends. It’s been a while, so I have a long one for you. Hope you packed a lunch. By the way, there's a ton of new pics up on my Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vangoat
Finally got around to visiting the Minneapolis zoo this week, and it was pretty great. About the same size as the Cleveland Zoo, but with easier and/or closer access to the animals. Most of the animal areas are made of some sort of clear super plastic as opposed to the typical fence/giant safety pit/fence/dangerous hungry animal layout. This means that you can literally press your face right up against the bear as he sleeps behind a rock, instead of watching from 90 feet away as the lazy bastard sleeps behind a rock.
The aquarium-style format is awesome. You can watch the otters and sea lions (and yeah, even the bears, after they popped some Red Bull or were cow-prodded into action. Dance, puppet, dance!) play underwater UFC right in front of your face. It adds a whole new depth to the zoo experience.
Unfortunately, the prairie dog area was set up the same way, except with shorter walls. You could literally lean over and snatch a dog if you wanted. You could also easily throw shit into the cage or hand feed the little guys if you wanted, despite the goddamn signs that said PLEASE DON’T FEED THE PRAIRIE DOGS. Was there an entire redneck family feeding the prairie dogs? Of course there was. Led by the father, naturally. I’m paraphrasing here, but only a little:
Redneck Daddy (to failure-spawn): Hey Cletus, check this out! (Feeds helpless little P-dog handful of weeds pulled from a ditch.)
Cletus (in flipflops, natch): Uhuhuhuhuhuhuh. Hamster hungry!
Redneck Daddy (arm draped over the Do Not Feed sign, because, hey, it’s too F’n hot to stand up on his own gumption): Cletus, gowon over there and grab some moradem weeds!
Redneck Mommy (tubetop, way too much of her way too freckily failure-feeders showing, prison-tat on neck): Ain’t they the cutest? We should get one them ginny pigs! (feeds prairie dog a McDonalds Styrofoam coffee cup from the 80s. Earth just gives up and swallows all of us, shits us into space and starts over with nice friendly bacteria).
Anyway. Redneck family aside, an enjoyable time at the zoo. For five bucks you could slap a few crackers on a giraffe’s tongue, and maybe that giraffe would slap the tongue on your face:
Oh yeah, and I have no idea how they got it back here all the way from Tatooine, but they had a Bantha:
Apparently, it’s actually an Earthling called a Takin, but I swear to god I half expected to see some Sand People giving Obi-Wan the finger from the Bantha’s back.Usually when I visit the zoo, I think about how much it’s gotta suck to be an animal trapped in one of the displays. How sad is a timberwolf with only a third-acre of timber to lope around in? Has to be terrible, right?
But what if it isn’t? I’ve spent the last 11 months watching wild animals cavort just outside my kitchen window. In these 11 months, I’ve learned to things:
-Blue Jays are dicks
-Being a wild animal is overrated.
Seriously. Deer, for instance. My yard is a safehaven for about 15 whitetails. They come here, they know that a)they’ll be fed a steady diet of corn, salt and other assorted deer goodies and b)the biggest danger they’ll face is a dipshit weimaraner with no chance of catching them. They KNOW this. They’re so comfortable with me that I can walk to within 15 feet of the Old Country Starch Buffet before they even raise their heads.
Despite all this security and a pretty gaping lack of predators (until hunting season, anyway) this far south, these guys are CONSTANTLY on edge. If I so much as fart in my own kitchen, even a slow-burn, one-cheek squeak, any deer in the yard bolt like I just launched the space shuttle out my ass. They’re never comfortable. I’m telling you, it’s no way to live.
An example of the typical deer dinnertime:
Two bucks, both at least 10 points, are munching whole corn with two younger bucks and the family matriarch. Having a good time. Two miles away, a farmer drops a chicken egg into a haystack.
Five heads, 26 points, five tails shoot straight up. Ten eyes strain in the general direction of the egg drop. Hold this pose for 17 seconds.
The two big bucks decide they aren’t taking any chances (which might explain why they got to be so big) and bolt like Witzy during a dinosaur attack. The other three go back to their fine corn dinner. Until, half a minute later, a eagle shits in the river four miles away. Repeat scene ad nauseum.
So maybe being cooped up in a cage where you’re fed three squares a day (or more if there’s an illiterate redneck family mouth breathing near your hut) ain’t all bad. There are those myths of poor urban folks who spend their lives trying to get INTO prison because they have no place to go and nothing to eat on the outside. I can see it.
Of course everything yearns to be free. You see this wolf lying there and you know he’s dreaming about running down a caribou on some frosty plain, not being chucked a plate of Kal Kan three times a day by a highschooler in khaki shorts.
I certainly understand his pain. I moved out of Ohio and into the almost-bush for similar reasons (‘Course, Captain Fangs here never tried to find a job in Ohio. Who has it tougher in the wild NOW, bitch?). On the other hand, if I had to worry about being mauled by a grizzly bear or stalked by a lion every time I speared a pancake at the Whistle Stop, maybe those four walls of climate-controlled wilderness wouldn’t seem so bad.Then again, maybe not. Only the Bantha knows for sure.
