Today I woke up at 7:30 in the morning, ate a breakfast of 'Fruity O's' and a bisquit, and went and took a walk on the beach with Sibling and Liz. It was a great morning. Also, I discovered I got sunburned yesterday on the boat, yeap, on my neck/shoulder region. It hurts a lot because I use that skin spot to hold bags... Oh well, I'll tough it out... what's a little pain, eh? So, after our walk on the beach - which ended approximately around 9:00, because we needed to get Mother tea - we went back to the hotel room got showered, and packed to go, and left by 10:35 for the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo.
We drove for about twelve minutes before pulling up to the small enclosure area, and in my head I was thinking 'it looks bigger on TV'. Sibling merely said "this is it...?" So, I ignored the size of the zoo, since I already knew what was inside and that it had to be a bit larger on the inside, we walked inside and told the woman behind the counter that we had scheduled a meeting with Patti Hall, the director. Patti had just gotten to the zoo, and was in a meeting though, so the woman behind the counter said we could just walk around the zoo ourselves and then if we didn't bump into Patti around there, she'd be by the gift shop later.
So, we did just that. Walking around the first things we saw were the lemurs on Lemur Island. They don't have a fence around Lemur Island, it's just an island... Lemurs don't like water, so they stay on the land. After the lemurs, we crossed a little bridge thing, two our left side -while on the bridge- was a turtle, and on our right were three alligators. Then we made a sharp left to look at Lemur Island some more and some ducks... and a swan named Romeo [who on the Series is a jerk...] after that I saw a bear, but I didn't know if it was Milley or Buddha, the two resident Black bears, so we went closer to them and took some pictures of them. After that, we went through the -what I am going to call- the Aviatrix, which housed about twenty or so exotic birds. The strangest one was the Coocoobara, they make a strange noise - I had seen one before on Jimmy Fallon's new show.
We left the birds, and then saw some kind of...deer thing.... I don't know, but Liz pet it. Then I moved on and took a picture of a peacock and then I took a picture of Lady (a lioness) and then I saw some coatimundis (coati), but they were sort of sleeping so I really couldn't see them. And then I saw some capuchin monkeys one was Michael, one was Crunch and the other was Kunda... she was blonde... I'd never seen him before... And then I bypassed the goats and the deer and the llama looking things and the emu bird and went toward Chuckie, a gigantic alligator. I took two pictures of him him. Did you know, that during Hurricane Ivan (the first hurricane the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo went through, Chuckie was lost! He was later found and such, but, boy, that's scary...)
After Chuckie, we moved and then I saw Rajah and Rani, a white tiger and a 'regular' tiger. Cool stories to follow... Anyway, Liz and I tried to boof them over to us, which is pretty much what it sounds like when you say it out loud. But like 'BoOoOoooOooffuh'. With those inflections and things, too. After those tigers, I continued along and found Umba, Mandril Baboon. After Umba, I saw Katrina and Chaca, two spotted black leopards. Then I walked further on that path and saw some wallabys, and I snagged some pictures of them. Then I meandered on over to where Simba and Cici, the two Barbary lions that the zoo has. They're awesome... except Barbary lions are extinct in the wild, and Simba is completely amazing, and everyone wants a piece of him for their zoo, so that should give the Little Zoo That Could some more publicity.
Then, as we finished up the circle, walking back up to the entrance, Patti Hall waved at me, and I waved back and I said, "Liz! Patti Hall is waving to me! How did she knows it was us? Do we dress funny? It's because we're from Jersey? Patti Hall is psychic!" She then greeted us and my party and the couple people that came on the tour with us. Then, we spoke for a few moments and then moved to go and watch some ghost tigers (there's only thirty in the whole world, and the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo has two, it's a double recessive gene...) get their nails clipped. It was cute, they were growling a little bit.. adorable - I got to pet one.
Then Patti led us to a large cage, with two special needs Capuchin monkeys inside: Trey and Lulu. Trey did not want to come out and play, but Lulu sure did. In fact, as soon as the cage door opened, she was out onto Patti's arm and then onto my shoulder and then my dome. Needless to say, I'm glad and proud and stuff to be the first person not zoo related to have had been jumped on. Anyway, Lulu jumped around for a good twenty to thirty minutes, cameras flashing all around, but she mainly kept to my neck, camera and head, Liz's face, Sibling's arms and Mother's shoulder...once. Lulu had a strange habit of jumping from a strange woman beside me to the cage, wrapping her tail around my neck to turn and then swinging herself into the bushes behind me... It was so cool to see, I tell you what...
After we put Lulu back in the box with Trey, we moved on to the back lot area where we followed Patti and saw an older Capuchin monkey pair. I clearly saw that the male older capuchin monkeys are in fact, obnoxious 'butt holes'. The female was lovely, all calm and peaceful... she did, however, steal the piece of fruit the male worked so hard to throw things around to get... Ah well... After that we saw a male peacock and a female peahen standoff! Patti called it a 'Mexican Standoff', so I'm telling you, the reader.... yeah.
Oh! My! GOSH! After that we went inside this little area house place where all the food is prepared, and I saw the meat delivery, a box was labeled 'neck' and another 'wing', Patti said that the meat was cut up into quarters, and then she opened up another little room that looked like it was made out of thin pieces of wood... Yeah, painted black... with a door. We kicked off our shoes, and then hopped in a room with three baby kangaroos! One was eight months old, another was seven months old and the other was six months old. The five month old was feeling a little bit sickly, so was unable to join the others and us in the visitor area. So, I held .... Liz and I and Sibling held a baby kangaroo, her name was [still is, but we're not there anymore, so it's past tense] Matilda, they called her Tilly. And then after that, I put my shoes back on, cleaned my hands and then Patti was like "I'm gonna do something else with you guys."
Liz and I were shocked and amazing, more things to do! Inconceivable! So then she finally let the cat out of the bag, what're we going to do? Feed some tigers! See? Remember when I said that there would be some more fun stories to tell? I told you! Yes, Sibling, Liz and I all bottle fed milk to a tiger. Sibling fed Salt, who was placed with Pepper in their own enclosure. While Liz and I fed Rajah and Rani, in another enclosure. After each time we fed them, we boofed at them, and placed our hands and faces up against the fence and the tigers spoke to us, it was amazing!
One of the most awesome experiences of my life! Felines are so amazing! After we were done playing with Rajah and Rani, Patti moved us all to Simba and Cici's enclosure, and we all got to take really good pictures of Simba because he was then put into a separate area where he pretty much schmoozed everyone. Apparently, he's a big baby, and is in love with attention. Which, by the way, for a gigantic Barbary Lion is hysterical. He was quite talkative, too, responding in whatever noise he could to what Patti was saying... So cool...
But after that... after that, the tour ended, and we had to leave...
And it was sad...
I didn't like leaving...
But Patti said that we should call next time, and be Zoo Keepers for a day, which would be amazing - since that's what I"m planning on doing as my career anyway. So, now I have her business card, which she said I could have, a bright green and white Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo T-Shirt, a plush cat, a magnet, and over 800 pictures...
After the zoo, and after eating at a nearby place - where I got steak, which was the worst steak I got on the trip... much too much pepper - we drove to Louisiana... We scheduled a Ghost Tour for six o'clock, however, we left lunch/dinner around 4 thirty and we wound up getting into Louisiana at 6:20-ish. Unfortunately, I had to call the tour place and cancel it, which meant I didn't get to see my ghostie locations. That's alright, I guess, I mean, it's not like I won't be traveling there again.
Once we arrived in Louisiana, we went immediately to our Bed and Breakfast which was called Chez Ellie Marie, and is run by Jon and Edwina Figaro. We dropped all of our stuff off there, got a brief tour and had a sit down chat with the both of them for about twenty to thirty minutes.
It was a great conversation, topics ranged from morals and respect to the Zulu coconuts (Edwina's father was a high ranking member, I think she said - they paint coconuts and throw them at people during Mardi Gras. They don't throw them anymore, they caused physical pain or something, who knew?) We also spoke about what we were doing in Louisiana, what we did in Alabama, the tours we were going to take, and then I stopped listening to what Edwina, Liz and Sibling were saying because Jon came back with directions on how to use the trolley and how to get to the French Quarter.
After that, we asked about where we could eat. Just down the street a little bit, there was a place, so, we ate there. It was called La Granada, and it was delicious! I had a lamb shank. Liz said I ordered it because I like to say shank. That is false, it was because I didn't want to get the steak... because lamb was on the menu, and I often do not get the option for lamb, so, when the option was offered, I chose it.
After we ate, we went back to Chez Ellie Marie and slept... except I went on a crazy rant about how Hoo doo heard about a whole bunch in the Louisiana area... So, I creeped myself, Liz and Sibling out with that. It was awesome. Now, we sleep.
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