Reading Mac’s entry the other day about interviewing candidates for an administrative assistant position in her office, specifically the part where she asked the candidates to tell her a joke, made me stop and think. And there’s only one joke I know off the top of my head.
The joke:
What’s brown and sticky?
Answer: A stick!
I would never get hired if I told that joke because I’d tell it and then I’d guffaw like a goon for about five minutes afterward.
Saturday dawned cool and sunny, and I puttered around the house for a few hours while Fred puttered around outside. I went to fill the bird feeders and realized that they were NASTY and desperately needed to be cleaned out. I honestly don’t remember the last time I cleaned any of the bird feeders, but I need to get on it and start doing it regularly, because that kind of nastiness shall not be tolerated in MY bird feeders.
Not tolerated, I say!
So I spent half an hour soaking and then scrubbing out the bird feeders, and ugh the SMELL from those damn things. I put them out back to dry and refilled and rehung them Sunday morning, and the birds seem pretty happy about the clean-and-filled bird feeders.
Fred finished what he was doing pretty early and then he surfed around looking for something we could spend the rest of the day doing. We talked about going to the movies, but didn’t want to waste the nice weather sitting in a movie theater. We ended up going for a drive to locate the place where the pigs are going to be processed in a few days.
(Yes. I do feel sorry for them. No. We’re not changing our minds, but I will miss being entertained by their antics, even if their antics are hanging out in their wallow 23 hours a day and eating the other hour a day. Well. Probably it’s more of a 20 hour/ 4 hour split, but I haven’t really timed it or anything.)
Then we hopped onto the highway and drove to South Huntsville, where we visited a nature preserve. It’s, basically, a drive-through animal park with free-roaming “exotic” animals. We visited there several years ago with the spud and enjoyed it, so we decided to check it out again.
We enjoyed the drive, and I have got to say – there’s just nothing as entertaining as emus. We always call them Bill Phillips, due to the striking resemblance, and we spent much of the trip yelling “Here comes Bill Phillips, roll up your window!” and “Bill Phillips is angry today.” and “Go away Bill Phillips, I have nothing for you!”
For the record Bill Phillips emus are very violent when you offer them a cup of corn. They like the hell out of their corn and they would like you to give them ALL the corn, please. Now. Or else. Bill Phillips will get angry if you don’t hand over that damn corn. You wouldn’t like an angry Bill Phillips.
There was a zebra in residence, and I practically had to physically restrain Fred from opening the car door and getting out to hug the zebra. He kept petting it, saying “It’s so soft! Isn’t it soft? I think we need a zebra!”
(I would not, for the record, be opposed to having a zebra frolicking about in the back forty.)
Fred was also impressed with the softness of the camel, and at one point I was staring off in another direction, trying to get a picture of one of the Bill Phillipses and suddenly there was an entire camel’s head in the car, headed for the cup of corn I had in my lap.
I don’t know that camels are all that violent or anything, but I was TERRIFIED. I was all “DO NOT WANT!” and held out my cup of corn to the camel and then did my best to push his head out of the car so he would go away and all the time Fred was laughing his ass off and I was all “WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING I ALMOST DIED!”
Goddamn pushy animals.
There were, um… those animals. That I don’t like. Llamas! I have a hard time remembering what llamas are called, for some reason. I seem to remember hearing that llamas like to spit at girls (is this true? I don’t know. Did I make it up? Maybe.) and their teeth scare me a little, so instead of holding my cup of corn out the window for them to partake, I just tossed some corn on the ground.
There were a buttload of deer there – the lady running the front gate told us that ten babies had been born this year, and the deer were running rampant and giving us the eye and crowding around the car until we gave them food.
We saw alligators too (they’re kept in an enclosed area) and ducks and turkeys. We would have stopped at the reptile building on the way out, but it seemed rather crowded and we’re not crazy about crowds, so we just headed home.
It was neat, but it’s really got me wanting to take a trip to Tigers For Tomorrow, which we’re planning to do this Fall once it cools down a little more.
We realized in retrospect that the perfect thing to do Saturday morning would have been to take the kayaks out for a few hours. It would have been lovely on the water and early in the day there wouldn’t have been many people around. We’ll have to keep that in mind for the next cool, sunny Saturday morning.
Fred’s been trying to convince me for the past few years that we need a couple of Sea-Doos. The man has no idea how close I am to caving.
See tons more pictures of the animals we saw, here.
12:23 pm: Harbl airing commences.
From outside the chicken yard, Maxi keeps a close eye on the baby chickens. She thinks they might be tasty, but she’ll behave if she knows what’s good for her.
Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: “You pipple giffs me zee headache.”
2005: God, I love the internet.
2004: Three days into the school year, and I’m sick to death of bus issues.
2003: My weekend can be summed up thusly: long periods of mind-numbing tedium broken with a stretch of horrified disgust, with a soupcon of panic tossed in for good measure.
2002: Maine recap.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.