Roadtrip 2012
Best part of Roadtrip 2012 was feeding a giraffe romaine lettuce at the Milwaukee County Zoo. They extort $10 from you for the priviledge, but there is something weird and wonderful about being eye level with a giraffe intent on grabbing something out of your hand with a foot-long black tongue. It's like a deer that a mad scientist got hold of.
This giraffe was male, 7, named Baka-something
"fortunate one," in Swahili, said the zoo volunteer who supplied the box of lettuce. You just know the Africans who sold him to Milwaukee relayed his real name phonetically, but fudged the translation, which is really "Shithead" in Ugandan. Hey, are buyers from middle America gonna know the dif? Nah, thought the sellers.)
and totally fixated on the box of treats. If he could have figured out a way to head-butt the nice old lady holding the box and just helping himself, he would have. I have seen that expression in impenetrable dark eyes before - squirrel eyes, when that squirrel is thinking about cutting out you, the middle man, in your capacity as nutmeat doler-outer. The squirrel is thinking he could probably negotiate that bag of nuts just fine if you dropped it. Of course, it is more menacing on something 14 feet tall, even with those long Mabelline lashes.
In unrelated news, on way to work I passed a VW bug with giant fake eyelashes on its headlights. It recontextualizes a VW quite a bit. Now I want to see that on an Audi.
This giraffe was male, 7, named Baka-something
"fortunate one," in Swahili, said the zoo volunteer who supplied the box of lettuce. You just know the Africans who sold him to Milwaukee relayed his real name phonetically, but fudged the translation, which is really "Shithead" in Ugandan. Hey, are buyers from middle America gonna know the dif? Nah, thought the sellers.)
and totally fixated on the box of treats. If he could have figured out a way to head-butt the nice old lady holding the box and just helping himself, he would have. I have seen that expression in impenetrable dark eyes before - squirrel eyes, when that squirrel is thinking about cutting out you, the middle man, in your capacity as nutmeat doler-outer. The squirrel is thinking he could probably negotiate that bag of nuts just fine if you dropped it. Of course, it is more menacing on something 14 feet tall, even with those long Mabelline lashes.
In unrelated news, on way to work I passed a VW bug with giant fake eyelashes on its headlights. It recontextualizes a VW quite a bit. Now I want to see that on an Audi.