Flinging Poo

You people - you are the people who encourage the Wayans brothers to continue to make movies. I hate you people:

We visited the Columbia zoo on Friday. Now as far as zoos go, this one is pretty decent. There was only a bit of the obsessive/compulsive pacing (from the grizzlies) that usually leaves me wishing I had just stayed home to watch the Discovery Channel. Instead we watched raw meat launched across the "safety chasm" to the five hungry tigers, fed exotic birds nectar from a cup while they perched on my arm and head, and stood a few feet from an annoyed 300 lb. gorilla banging on the glass; these thing make for an entertaining (and holy crap I almost peed my pants) zoo outing.

Which means I could leave it at an enjoyable family fun day, but since I am nothing if not crabby - on to the complaining:

1) What is so funny about monkey butts? Baboons have odd asses. We get it. I would understand if humans found them interesting because their bums are a unique trait that we don't share - something along the lines of an elephant's trunk say, but they seem only to want to point and laugh. I remember my first run in with a monkey butt - I was fascinated (and maybe a bit repulsed, pink blisters don't look good on anyone). But this curiosity was at a very early age, and I was never amused, merely confounded. At some point, I learned that the bigger and brighter the baboon bottom, the more fertile the female; therefore, the more interested the male. What about this is comedic? Now the colorful hind quarters are nothing more to me than another notch in Darwin's bedpost. The point is, a forty-something year old man should not turn to his adult companion at the baboon exhibit and say, "Look at those butts!" and then giggle. What an ass! (See, I'm just as clever as him.)

2) Captian Obvious: when an animal is defecating, you do not need to say pointing, "Look, he's shitting!" It is difficult to toilet train a llama and if the zoo gave you a six foot square of dirt to stand in while hundreds of people stare, you would shit right there as well. (Now, that's a zoo I'd pay to see.) How is it - after changing diapers, cleaning out litterboxes, picking up behind our dogs, and wiping our own asses (except for myself, of course. I don't poop. I'm a lady) - after all that, how are we are still amused by feces?

3) No shit Sherlock (look at those puns go!): when you go to the zoo and it is 100° outside, the elephant enclosure is not going to smell of Old Spice. Furthermore, if there are four people in front of you and every single one them makes a comment along the lines of: "It stinks! - Smell that shit! - Holy crap! - and Someone took a dump!" you leave the fifth person no choice but to say, "We're in a freaking zoo! What did you expect? Are you new?"

A more useful note:

South Carolina has a lot of snakes that grow to be hundreds of feet long because the temperature never falls below 90° so they never, ever die, they just keep eating. So, utilizing the zoo to the full educational purpose for which it was created, I learned how to recognize the vicious man eaters from innocent look-alikes:

Quote of the day - Mother-in-law: We only drove a couple blocks when we decided 'What the heck?' we're going to turn around and go back so we can stay with you guys an extra day!

- lada unhinges her jaw and swallows her prey whole