Life of a Numbnut

Singapore Zoo, Continued

Continued from last blog…

Carlos, the handsome sea lion. Also a play-sea lion. Now, as a performer, Carlos has to give his volunteer a peck on the cheek as a "thank you" gesture. One of his volunteer was a man. Carlos just smooched him lightly on the cheek, and turned away. I thought that he didn't look too happy…and a bit disgusted. His next volunteer, however, was a cute girl with long black hair, about 6-8 years old. The host asked her to sit on a box, placed in front of us audience (not on the stage) and Carlos uh…walked? Waddled? Scampered? Well, Carlos sea-lion-walked from the stage, down the stairs, right up to the box, hoisted himself up, aimed for her lips and…SMOOOOOOOOOOOCHED! Hoo boy…For a moment, I thought he was doing a sea-lion's version of a French kiss! Cute girl pulled back, Carlos leaned forward, oh no, he's not going to let this sweet young thing go! Host told Carlos that it was enough, Carlos released the girl. Cute girl quickly rubbed her lips with the back of her hands with a disgusted look on her face. Fortunately, the boy sitting next to her in the audience seat was not her boyfriend, otherwise Carlos would have ended up as someone's dinner. Host asked cute girl if Carlos can give her another kiss and she immediately shook her head "NO" and quickly got off the box. Poor Carlos. We could see that he wanted to kiss her one more time as he waited excitedly beside the box. I don't blame her though. I got "kissed" by a sea lion on the cheek before and I left that place smelling like fish. The sea lion's concept of kissing is to place his mouth on your cheek and blow hard, resulting in saliva/water splashing everywhere. Imagine it doing that to your lips…


Next show…the elephant show! There were altogether four big jumbos performing on that day. I still think that the baby elephant, Amoi at the A Famosa Animal World was the best. She had the smiliest face and seemed to enjoy herself very much. These elephants here weren't as lively as her. But anyway, they did the usual stuff, demonstrating how the Thais use them to drag logs and so on. Impressive…I don't think I can even move the log an inch. Anyway, there was this elephant who dragged the log into the stream, demonstrating elephant and stream power to transport logs. She (all of them are females) stopped suddenly and didn't move even though the mahout signaled at her to do so. Then…we saw a few yellowish round balls emerging from the surface of the water. I told my sis,"Oh my god, look at that! She did her business! I recognize it because I've seen an elephant s***ting before!" She was the second animal of the day to do her big business in front of me. Hmmm… While running off to another show, I saw a little Indian boy crying. He was lost. The zoo definitely isn't a good place to get lost at. Fortunately for him, the zoo's staff was around and attended to him, reporting to…some other people on her walkie talkie about a lost boy. He should be fine.


And the next show! Farm animals show! Ran like mad to watch the show, reached JUST in time for it. The first two dogs, a mongrel and a pure breed, demonstrated the dog's ability to herd sheeps…The pure breed dog couldn't resist snapping at the sheep's legs (playfully) while the sheep looked really, really irritated. Then, the mongrel demonstrated it's powerful smelling abilty…he had to search for a girl's hidden bangle, which he found quite quickly. And the last dog, a beautiful collie, show us why movies with dogs as the main actors are so successful. Then the host brought out a little white mice, STUART LITTLE! Ok, so he's not Stuart, but he sure looked like him. Then, it was lunch time.

Phew! No need to run for anymore shows after that…we took our time walking around, visiting other enclosures. I was telling my mom, "Very nice smell, wafting around. Really 'wangi'", as I walked past the Manned Wolf enclosure. We decided to take a break. One thing good about Singapore's zoo is that they have air-con shelters with vending machines. The animal enclosure next to the shelter was the cheetah enclosure. There were about three cheetahs there and their keeper was in the enclosure. He actually plucked one big giant leaf with a long stem and started tickling it while talking to two others who were in the enclosure as well. I assumed that they were trainees. Suddenly, this cheetah placed it's butt in front of a rock and started peeing…It was definitely an output day. I believed that the cheetah was marking it's territory. It was so odd to see them positioning themselves in front of rocks with butt high up in the air, and then shoot!

The Australian animals enclosure was closed for renovation, so we couldn't see the animals from the Land of Down Under. Pity. I was hopping hoping to see kangaroos. At the manatee and sea lion enclosure, a zoo staff was feeding them. While the manatees were eating in front, the sea lion was playing behind. I was wondering why the sea lion didn't disturb the manatees eat. Then I realized, the manatees were eating vegetables. Manatees are herbivores whereas sea lions LOVE to eat fish. So that was the reason… They had little penguins beside the manatee enclosure. Some were swimming around (they are pretty fast swimmers) and some were in the icy part of the enclosure, standing still like a statue. Some of the other animals which I saw (and can remember) were the sun bear, mountain goats, reptiles, big cats, lions, giraffe, comodo dragons and farm animals such as pot bellied pigs! Little black things…there were no piglets this time. The piglets were really cute, when I saw them last time.

Then, we were finally back at the entrance/exit, tired, smelly and worned out, but it was a good day. Lots of fun, exercise and excitement. The next time I go there, I'll go to the Bird Park, it's another excellent place to go to in Singapore.

Labels: Numbnut Explores the World

posted by StephanieC @ 4:41 PM