Lions and Tigers and Bears oh my!

Well dear readers I have some distressing news for you so make sure that you’re sitting down, have the tissues near and each others numbers so you can form a support group. It seems much to my chagrin and dismay the fowl are either coming much later in the week or are totally absent from the Royal Ontario Winter Fair. This means that there is no picture of me with my beloved prize winning pigeon

Despite this saddening fact I did have a lot of fun doing things such as checking out a warehouse full of cows, another of pigs and goats. My personal favorite was the horses I hope one day to own one. As promised I ended up buying a ton of fudge which I hope will last me until January, Jin how can I make this happen? (Besides keeping it a secret from my Italian family). I also ended up watching some horse jumping which was quite a bit of fun.

The weekend continued with Saturday which was tons of fun. Nikki and I headed to the zoo and were surprised to 1) find animals and 2) find them actually doing things. Now you’re probably thinking that I’m being facetious but the Toronto zoo lures you by hinting there are animals but the last time I went literally 68% of the animals were mysteriously absent. I think this is a great business plan people come to the zoo thinking they’ll be animals but instead they see you’re sign saying the animals are off display. In reality you’re not wasting time on animals and food. The only variable cost you have is the cost of printing those signs.

The highlight of the trip had to be when we went to see the mandrills. During my undergraduate career I took a course in primate behavior and actually got to be quite close with the prof and he even wanted me to be his grad student (how different my life would be if I decided to study lemurs in Madagascar). He taught me a lot about communicating with primates and I actually studied the mandrills at the Toronto zoo. It was interesting to see a group of students doing the same project that I did a few years ago. I asked the students what they thought of the mandrills and was told they don't do anything but I thought I could change that. Now Nikki is used to me and my weirdness so when I told her I could communicate with them she believed me. So I squatted down and made some faces and the female mandrill came over from the other side of the pen and she pushed her face against the glass and held her hands to the glass. The juvenile male wasn’t too impressed and started attacking me through the glass. When we decided to go the lovely little lady kept following me around the enclosure which was pretty funny. Chalk up another broken heart for the turtle.

CJ, I saw the Borat movie today and thought you might like to know what I thought. If you like the Ali G show you’ll probably like this a lot but it does tend to cross all sorts of lines. A few people actually left at one point. I thought it was pretty good but it wasn’t worth all the hype but it was worth seeing. Has any one else seen any good movies worth my 13 bucks lately?