Here we go….
Amy and Eric Malone, our friends, had a baby shower down in Arkansas this weekend. Whether the state in question is pronounced Ar-kin-saw or Ar-can-sis, I’ll leave to the experts. Before the shower, however, they drove us to this place:
We each brought two point three three three (repeating) loaves of bread. For six people in a borrowed van, that’s fourteen loaves of fiddy-cent white, sugar-added bread – the stuff Ze Germans hate. Can’t blame ‘em. Any culture that creates a necessary pantry distinction out of the phrase “no suguar added” should be reevaluated as a whole.
Animals, praise Jesus, don’t know the difference. Heck, Animals love sugar-added bread.
We round the corner, arm ourselves with carb- candy, and roll down the back windows. [Addendum: This was the first van I’ve even seen with power windows in back. I feel like such a hick. Quick, pass me a metro card, some fallafel and a Strand Books gift certificate]. As if by divine providence of the bread demigod, deer flocked to the car. Or would it be herded?
I suppose with “flocked” it creates a migratory metaphor…
So Amy stuck out her hand and gave the little guys some bread:
…to Eric’s chorus of, “Brrrreeeeeaaaaddddd!”
(Did I mention he was driving?)
I thought I saw the deer give me a wink,
but before I could know for sure, we left them behind.
Up around the hill we went until a friggin’ emu stopped us. It was a mad Emu, as all Emus are.
So Eric said, “Get ouddathe way, Emyoo!”
He appeased the bitterness of the Emu and his kind, who let us pass. Over what you ask? As it turns out, we’ve all been pronouncing their species-name wrong. They’re not happy about it. Thanks to Eric, the Emyoos stopped their non-violent, occupy-esque protests.
We turned around another bend and there sat an Elk in the mud.
He looked happy.
We also passed an arctic fox, which reminded me of Tony Anderson’s Russian Christmas Carol:
There was a regular fox in there that looked strangely familiar:
Let’s see that arctic fox pic again?
Yeah, he’s going for the chicken.
“OH LOOK!” said my bride.
“What?” I asked.
“Zebras!” she and Molly said together.
One of them wanted in.
I said, “No Zebra! This ain’t our car! Besides, it doesn’t have enough hoof-room in the floorboards.”
“Oh,” said the Zebra, but it sounded like pfpfbbpfpbpsttt. “Well take my picture and put it on Topher’s Facebook page.”
“You know Topher the Party Penguin?” I asked.
“All the animals of the forests do,” said Zebra Number One. “Why?”
“He turned up missing,” I said. “Some sorority girls stole him and made him work as their slave.”
“Bummer,” said Zebra. “Here, take a picture of my stripes. Maybe Topher can read Zebra code.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “He majored more in hardcore dancing back in the day. Also Birthday Ball.”
“Oh,” said Zebra. A silence passed. It was an awkward, half-hearted silence. “Well, we gotta go.”
We drove by a glade of sorts,
and then into a series of trees. There we saw buffalo resting.
“Are those real buffalo?” I asked Eric.
“Nope,” said Eric. “All the cowboys killed the real ones. There’s no buffalo left. Those are beefallo.”
“Oh,” I said. One was scratching itself on a tree more like a cow, less like a buffalo.
I threw a slice of bread at it, hoping to entice it over. “Stop the van,” I said to Eric.
He obliged.
Unfortunately, the white buffalo (a mythical creature to some) did not see the bread.
Alpha Brown Buff did, though, and saw it as a challenge. So he charged the van:
But I stared him down.
And he knew that we came in piece…s of bread. With pieces, rather, and sugar-loaded ones at that. Alpha Brown Beef took some, but he never took his eye off of me:
The bread was like crackers for Alpha Buff. He invited over the mythic white buffalo. Everyone in the van held a moment of silence. But not the white buffalo. He ate bread.
And more bread.
And even MORE bread.
In fact, he ate so much bread that he thought my bride’s hand was bread.
So we booked it out of there and met a camel instead. He had a voice like Dopey from the Seven Dwarves.
“Hey there, guys! So good to see you here! What a neato day!”
Kiger petted the camel, but the camel just wanted action, so he went over to the ladies side of the car.
I told him that was my wife and he left her alone. We drove away and saw some antelope or gazelle or something horned and crazy in the bushes.
And before we could get outta there, a friggin’ Emu blocked us again.
And again!
AND AGAIN!
So before I could lose my cool and start yellin’ like a drunk retiree, Eric said, “please move over, Emyoo.”
“Sure thing, old chap!” said the Emu. Who knew they were British?
But the monkies took advantage of the opportunity. They jumped on our roof and started monkeyin’ around up there. All we could see was their little hands snatching the bread, but I wouldn’t be fooled. So I stuck my Nikon out the window and BAM!
BAM!
Shot that monkey with my camera. That’ll teach those monkies to hide. I didn’t like the monkies, so Eric drove off and a half dozen or so jumped down, offended that we didn’t like their company.
A llama flagged us down,
stuck his head in,
and asked not only for some bread, but for me to take a picture of him asking for bread AND to photoshop in a speech bubble that gave subtitles. The nerve of this llama. I said, “Heck no, llama. The three visual artists who read my blog will hate me forever if I do that.”
“Nnnnnaaaaaahhh,” he said. “Doooo iiiit.”
I wouldn’t, but he kept begging and spitting and begging and spitting so that I was overcome:
(Don’t hate me forever, visual artists). Llama snatched up the bread.
Then he trotted off without so much as a “thank you.” All he said was “TAG ME ON FACEBOOK!”
Which made me never want to social network again. I tagged him anyway…
But a hippo cheered me up, lumbering over to us. His eyes were crying white stuff, but I’m thinking he was the opposite of Eeyore (who was not a hippo, but might as well have been). My bride tried to feed him, but missed:
So we booked outta there and went to the white rhino. No, not the fabulous Joplin Hair Salon that’s painted like a zebra for no real reason. An actual white rhino. Kiger wanted to feed it, but Molly whispered in his ear, “you can throw it better than Kiddo.”
Kiger, on a dare, threw a slice of bread out the window.
He played it off like a casual toss, but we all really know what he had in mind:
That’s five points in horseshoes, Kiger. Or rhinoshoes, as the case may be.
By that point, there was WAY too much evidence that we had snuck FOURTEEN LOAVES of bread into this place, so we were booking it and parked near the petting zoo.
Amy grabbed a snake.
Then passed it to Kiger.
Who passed it to Molly, who took it…
grinned…
…and passed it to Kiddo who said, “Ooooo!”
I said, “Since you like it, hold it closer for a better picture, babe!”
“Nice, babe. A little closer!”
“Closer!”
She passed it off to me after that. And you know good and well what I did:
After that, I was thinking about how I should take a snake back through the tour and hunt down those crazy monkies…
AT THAT VERY MOMENT, a friggin’ baby monkey ran up and grabbed my pant leg. It climbed up to my hip:
Then to my oblique:
Then to what little bit of a peck I had left after quitting my workout program post-undergrad school and pre-honeymoon:
It started nibbling on the slice of bread it had nicked from my other hand during the confusion.
FACT: All monkies come out of the womb as professional pickpockets. Since my protagonist is a pickpocket, I repented. “Hey! I like this monkey!”
Even though moments earlier his brother had pulled my hair:
Monkie sat there like my little boy (and he was definitely a boy).
He feigned like he saw something behind me.
I said, “You see somethin’ little guy?”
But he didn’t see nothin’. He just wanted to straddle my shoulders, a piggy-back ride.
Overcome by his monkey-cuteness, I offered bread over my shoulder. I couldn’t see him, so I didn’t know if he would get it.
He did, and thanked me and asked if he could do anything in return.
What a polite young monkey! I asked if he would pose with me so I could do my best Conan O’Brien impersonation.
He said, “WAAAAH!”
I think we did okay…
He jumped down after trying to eat some plastic (no, it didn’t come out of the middle of my messy mane, grandma), so we ran out of things to do. Kiddo suggested we buy more food.
I said, “sold.”
Armed with zoo pellets, we strutted over to the big pets.
And what did we see?
Peacocks!
Which left behind a feather for Kiddo.
We saw turtles – Kiddo’s fave!
A random prairie dog!
Wimpy deer!
Pot-bellied pigs!
That also liked bread.
But tried to eat the whole bag of pellets…
We hurried over to the goats who ate pellets out of our hands with a bit more grace than the pot bellied pigs.
Amy took a picture of an introverted one.
And it eyed her down.
So we left and went on to the donkies.
Which liked me okay…
But LOOO—
–OOOOO—
—OOOVED Kiddo.
“What’s this over here?” asked Eric and he chased away.
Amy chased after him.
They both chased after something.
Then I read the sign.
“Uhhh, guys?” I asked. “I don’t think…” But Kiddo had sprinted ahead of them, chasing one of the ones in front of us.
In the end, they liked us okay, or at least they liked Kiddo okay. Once she had the papa roped in,
the momma came too.
And when the papa left, the momma stayed.
Even when Kanga-momma got scared, she trusted Kiddo to keep her safe.
So I passed off the camera to Kiddo and started to feed Kanga, but while I was doing it I noticed some movement. “Hey Kiddo?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“There’s something inside here…”
And out popped little Joey!
Then we gave our extra bread to a little kid and left in the van we borrowed from Amy’s mom. Unfortunately, it had bison and buffalo slobber and monkey crumbs all over it. Amy’s mom likes a clean van, so we decided to take it to the car wash.
On the way out, I noticed another sign:
Wish I would have seen that sign beforehand.
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