百害無益: Hamburgers & Me (Day 7)

"Let's Look At Some Dirty Animals"


That's me circa 1989 at a local zoo (about 40 minutes from my hometown). Since I departed America, my mother had put an incredible about of time and effort into organzing boxes of photos we had into albums chronologically. She was very proud of this work and insisted that I give these albums the once over as they were allegedly really funny. Looking at my hair and clothing in this picture I will say that yes, the photo albums were really funny, but I digress. When I was glancing over these trip to the zoo pictures, someone, perhaps me, suggested a random return trip to this zoo. Ha! Ha! Good joke...oh wait, we went there today, at least some of us did.

My nurse of a sister and father both had to work (chumps!) and were thus not able to make the trip to the zoo. My brother, on the other hand, did not have work, but refused to go on the grounds that he hates, "dirty animals." So my mother, my sister, and I trekked off to the Catskill Mountains, home to the Catskill Game Farm..."the family place to be!" (or was Hoffman's Playland "the family place to be?" I can't get my mid-80s local business tv spots right anymore). Anyhow after a brief drive through the lovely Catskill Mountains we arrived at the game farm...let the good times roll!


We are asses, and we bite.


My sister pontificating about the true essance of a rhinosaurus. Immediately after snapping this picture, the rhino laid down. As it did so, it snorted or grunted or made some kind of noise like a fat guy would make after owning an all you can eat buffett. Right when the rhino made this noise, some random kid proclaimed, "Hey Dad! That rhino made a fart!!!!" The dad, looked at us nervously, mortified at what his child had said, but since we are intelligent and realize that farts are funny we laughed at his child's tourettes style outburst and the nervousness faded. Good times...good times.


Hey assface, here's an ass touching an ass' ass.


Perplexed by a deer.


Confused by a camel.


Reliving our childhood. Back in the 1987 photo album my mother so proudly showed me, there was a picture of my siblings and I sitting on this same swing set. Here my mother attempted to recreate the photo with only her most awesome children by editing out a couple losers. (Elaine devil horn noise!)


Best creepy dinosaur bird ever. I don't remember what it was called, but it was hella creepy and basically looked like a dinosaur. Also it tried to eat my camera.


To wrap up our trip to the zoo, we saw the elephant show. Now back when I was a small child we saw the same elephant show, and to this day my family still talks about it. Not because the show was particularly good, but because there were whirling elephants. There was a bit in the show where the elephants stood up and spun like ballerinas. Only we caught the after lunch so as they spun they also shat. As the spinning elephants' asses passed the crowd the front row was all like, "WHOA!!!" and leaning way back to avoid elephant doots. This time there was no spinning or shitting for that matter, but we were subjected to the most moronic question and answer session ever. It went a little something like this:

AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: How old is the elephant?
TRAINER: He's 18 years old.
AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: How long are their tails?
TRAINER: Well elephants are like people. People have different length arms, elephants have different length tails.
AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: Uh how old is he?
TRAINER: 18. Yes, you sir...
AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: What his age in years?
TRAINER: Still 18.
SOME RANDOM KID WHO WILL BE ON THE NEWS IN A FEW YEARS: Can he kill people?
TRAINER: I hope not. Next question?
AUDIENCE 5: How long are the tails?
TRAINER: They are different lengths. Last question.
AUDIENCE 6: But what is the age of that elephant...you know in years?
TRAINER: 18. Thanks for comming everyone, enjoy the rest of your day.

After that it, we'd had enough of the dirty animals and headed home for the day.