flamingle-ing and monkey assualt: a day at the zoo

Over the weekend, Laura, my sister and I went to the Baltimore zoo. I hadn't been in ages and I incessantly whine to Laura about the lack of animals in my life right now, so it was either this or get me a pet (never gonna happen).

To start, this one of my favorite memes to ever float around the internet:

So naturally, I was more than thrilled to find my tribe. I think I fit right in.

 

I bet they're all single too. I feel you, my sisters! (I assume they're all female.)

I lounged on a polar bear, which was actually super uncomfortable and I think my back is bruised:

The penguins were particularly friendly that day. My sister gave them a classic Native American name: White Eyebrow.

I have had a special love of lemurs ever since I saw an episode of Miami Ink. A girl came in to get tattooed with her pet lemur. It cuddled with her while she got work done. That soft tail! Where can I get one?

My sister wouldn't stop singing the song from Madagascar, by the way. And here is one doing yoga/meditating. He was pretty zen. Arms outstretched, opening his heart to the world. Way to focus, lemur. You do you.

And now for the highlight of the day. We went to the chimpanzee exhibit. Laura has had a strong resistance toward monkeys for a long time, and watching Planet of the Apes didn't help. She says they are too intelligent and aggressive. I agree, but considering we were at the zoo and not Jane Goodall-ing it out in the jungle, I figured we were pretty safe. After all, the monkeys are behind a strong wall. And the whole point of the zoo is to look at them, right?

So, we roll through the monkey area... watching them swing and play and take naps (super cute, by the way). We made our way to a section that had a huge enclosure with four or five chimps in it. We were watching for a while, not doing anything, just observing. The biggest chimp, who is sitting closest to us, started clapping. How fun and cute, we said! Two seconds later... he pursed his lips like so...

 

... makes eye contact with us, gets a wild look in his eye, and CHARGES. He stampedes toward us, picks up his giant water bowl, throws it at us, and then comes at us full force and slams his whole body angrily into the glass right where we are standing. We FREAKED. I'm pretty sure we all screamed... and I'm laughing to myself right now, but it was pretty scary in the moment. Even though there was a wall between us and he obviously couldn't get out, the way he came at us scared the crap out of us. One minute he seemed fine and the next, he was trying to body check us through the wall with pure rage. Needless to say, Laura's worst nightmare came true :) Here's some photo evidence of the aftermath:

You can see the chimp's handprints on the wall where he slammed into it. Laura's reaction alone made the whole trip worthwhile :) I have to say that one of the other chimps was very lovely. He came up to us and was putting his hand up to ours, interacting calmly. Laura even participated.

Note to self: If you visit the zoo, don't make eye contact with the giant apes.