Diana's Writing Blog

Wow, I suck at regular updating lately. And seeing as how my LA trip happened almost a month ago, I’m really late on getting the second part of the story out. I know, you were waiting with bated breath. Well, the wait is over:

LA Story, Pt.2
Let me just start by saying nothing could top Day 1, so this post will be a lot less exciting and, because I’m getting sick of writing about the trip, a bit less detailed.

So for day 2 we went to the LA Zoo. I thought we were going to get to go to the San Diego Zoo, but whatever, it was still an awesome zoom. Again, I’m just gonna start by saying that pushing Grandma around in a wheelchair in the hot sun all day is a more than a bit tiring. And we’ll leave it at that. Moving on!

So, we got to the zoo pretty early, which was cool because we got to see the seals being trained and fed immediately after we entered. So that was pretty entertaining. After that, my sis and I scoped out the animal exhibits we most wanted to see and designed the route accordingly. But we ended up stopping and looking at random animals on the way, too. Like the meerkats. Or meerkat, really, since only one was out. And some kid who was there with his day camp or whatever and had to be like 12 at least was convinced that this meerkat was Timon. And the way he tested that theory was to yell, "Hey! Hey, Timon! Timon! Timoooon–Hey look he answers! His name is Timon. Hey, Timon! Hey! TIMON!" Yeah, that meerkat’s name is not Timon, kid, it’s just looking at you wondering the same thing I am: could you be any more annoying?

I’m pretty sure we saw the same kid doing the patented zebra call later on: "Hey! Hey, zebra! Zeeeebra! ZEBRA!" God! Friggin’ kids. I wanna slap them sometimes. And there were soooo many of them because all the day camp type places think it’s an awesome idea to make kids put in matching shirts and wander around the zoo all day. I really wanted to slap this kid who thought the proper response to bees swarming around while we were eating was to swat at them with an empty tray. I didn’t even get to see him get stung.

Anyway, onto the good parts of the zoo trip: the animals. We saw a lot of cool animals, like crocodiles (or gator, I forget ^^), an otter–well two but one was all OCD and just kept doing continual flips off the wall, koalas, kangaroos, giraffes, orangutans, and a bunch of other stuff. Of course, most of the animals were napping by the time we got to them because by then it was noon and too damn hot to be conscious and doing stuff. Except the elephant. We only saw one and he was in this sad, temporary housing while his awesome habitat was under construction. He was sooo bored. For the most part, he just shifted his weight from foot to foot like maybe he had an ipod hidden somewhere on his person. And at one point I swear he was using his trunk like a yo-yo. But every so often he’d randomly pick up this huge tire and haul it across to the other side of the compound. He was all, "Excuse me, important business!" It was way cute.

But the coolest part of the day was definitely the gorillas. We timed it so we were there to watch them get fed. So, after staking out a spot at the front we got to see an adorable baby gorilla playing around for a while. Then it was feeding time. The keepers bring the gorillas back into a little holding pen then scatter food all over the habitat. Then they release the gorillas and let them "hunt" for it like they would in the wild. The most awesome part was when the silverback decided he wanted whatever food one of the females had. So he went barreling across the habitat right toward the glass (which the female was a foot from) and checked her right into the glass like a hockey player.

I have to say, even though the keepers specifically told us that the glass was unbreakable even by the silverback, it was kind of scary to see a 600lb gorilla hauling ass right at us. The hilarious part occurred when the smaller, older female was like "Oh, you wanna go?" and the silverback was all, "Eeep!" and ran off with the female trying to chase him down and beat his ass. And the keeper was all, "And to my right, you’ll see our 600 pound silverback being chased by a female." He finally got away and managed to get back over by the glass and plunk down on the food he wanted. Toward the end he did this GQ model pose where he laid on his stomach and rested his chin on his fist. It was way cute but we didn’t get a good pic of it because of the reflection from the glass.

So that’s it for Day 2. From then on out it’s mostly wedding stuff, which I might get to later.

In other news, I’ve started working on my novel again. So everyone’s favorite Writing Progress box is back: