Last night Melinda reminded me that I hadn’t really updated my blog in a while.
And, I really haven’t. Not with anything of substance anyways.
But mostly, it’s because there’s not that much to say. Everything has fallen into the same old routine, and while I’m getting quite sick and tired of it, I know I just have to stick it out for a little while longer. I think sometimes I make it sound like I don’t appreciate the job that Jim gave me at the campground, but I do. I really, really do. I think I’d be going batshit insane if I didn’t have anything besides piano teaching.
Not that I don’t love teaching my kids, it’s just that it’s only two nights a week for four or so hours, which, really isn’t that long. Although admittedly, some nights seemmuch longer than others, haha.
I feel lately like I’m being disappointed by a lot of people. Which, really isn’t their fault because I guess I expect too much. So, maybe it’s best not to expect anything at all. Then you’ll never be disappointed and only pleasantly surprised.
Unfortunately, that’s much easier said than done.
A lot of people haven’t been around as of late, for various reasons so it’s kind of lonely sometimes. I’m sure that things will return to normal before I know it, but it’s hard not to dwell on sometimes.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I get extremely uncomfortable messaging or contacting people first. With the exception of about ten or so people, I generally refuse to do it. Despite the reasons. I hate calling places, but I’m okay if someone calls me. I have no idea where I developed this from… It kind of bothers me too, because I do wish I could be more outgoing than I am. I’m just really shy and there’s pretty much no reason or need for it.
Anyways, that’s enough of that.
Aki … drove me absolutely crazy this morning.
To the point where I honestly thought of frying her up in a pan. There’s this … thing, that has four sides, all mirrors, and a bell dangling from it. She sat there for hours just hitting it. Tap tap tap. Ding ding ding. Tap tap tap. Ding ding ding. Tap. Ding. Tap tap. Ding ding.
My god I thought I was going to lose it. So I yelled at her and she stopped for about a minute, them moved to the other toy, which is circular mirrors and continued the same thing. She woke me up at about 7:30am with this.
I was less than impressed.
Work at four today. Nicole didn’t come on Monday, so she’ll be coming today instead. That makes my night almost full, except for half an hour, which really could have been booked yesterday, so who knows. I hope everyone shows up, it makes the night go so much faster.
This may be extremely long and filled with far too many photos and videos. So if you don’t want to browse through it all, I understand. The short version is we had a great time on Sunday at the African Lion Safari.
As for the long version… here we go!
So, Sunday. Kat and I decided that she’d pick me up at 10:00am and we’d go somewhere for breakfast and then head off to the African Lion Safari. Our first idea for breakfast was Cafe Gratzi, but when we got there it was ridiculously busy. We were there for about five minutes and no one spoke to us, so we decided to try Perkins instead. Sadly, no luck there either as the line was nearly out the door.
We ended up going throguh the drive-thru at Timmies, and hitting the highway. Despite the fact is was pouring rain, it was relatively easy to get to. As long as you remember that you are pretty much in the middle of no where. We got to the Safari, got our tickets and headed in.
We wanted to get these ponchos that everyone seemed to had — especially after our winning poncho experience in New York City. They were cute though, they had little animals all over them but we couldn’t find where they were selling them so we kind of gave up on that notion. We also decided to take Kat’s car through instead of taking the tour bus. That way we could go at our own speed and stop when we wanted to. Going into the park made me feel like I was going into Jurassic Park or something. For some reason, I remember them having this part in the movie that looked exactly like these gates. So you drive in one, then they shut the gate behind you and open the one in front of you so that you can go and none of the animals can escape. First up was the Narobi Sanctuary which held a few different species of birds, llamas and cattle.
We were surprised that so many of the animals were out in the rain, but I guess fort he birds it doesn’t make a huge amount of difference. I know you’re not supposed to roll down your windows, but we did briefly to snap a photo of the ducks which were ridiculously loud! The llamas were really cute, but as you can see they looked drenched! There was a little shelter for them, so I don’t know why they didn’t use it. I guess they don’t really mind the rain. You gotta love the cattle all huddled together in the shelter though!
Next through the reserve was the Cheetah Breeding Compound, which I kept reading as the ‘Cheetah Breeding Campground’. You know you’ve worked at a campground too long when. . . That part didn’t last long and there were only two cheetahs that we could see. So we kept en route and landed in SIMBA COUNTRY. They had the same signs over and over and over, because as I can imagine, people are probably ridiculous and stupid. I mean really, who in their right mind would want to try to feed a lion? O_O If they attempt it, they have whatever is coming to them. That’s what I think.
The lions were definitely awesome, but they only had one male and the others were females (at least, we only saw one male). They were just lounging on their rocks, looking somewhat unimpressed at the weather. The jeep you’ll see in the first photo is the safari jeep and they’re stationed in pretty much every area. I guess it’s to make sure people aren’t idiotic and do something to harm the animals because realistically, that’s far more plausible than the animal randomly doing something to hurt the people without any prompting. But yes, the lions were super awesome.
Even though the cheetah breeding compound was back a little bit, the hang out for the cheetahs was just after the lions. There were three of them and they couldn’t have been any cuter. Kat shot a video of them because at one point, they all started cleaning the one guy.
Following the cheetahs was one of the places we were most looking forward to — the monkeys. Okay in actual fact they’re baboons but that doesn’t change their extreme awesomeness. You always hear about them climbing on people’s cars, and when we were driving up there we saw five all on one vehicle! So we got up there and parked because they’re really interesting to watch. Then we had a few visitors on the car as well. One licked the hood and windshield. In the video I jokingly say he’s cleaning it, but he’s obviously drinking the water. There was another who pulled the windsheild wiper from the back out… you know, like you would if you were going to clean the blade. We were a bit nervous they’d break something, but as they said at the front gates, that’s the risk you take driving your own car in. A couple of them ended up on the top and we could hear them walking around on the roof. Then our buddy (the one who licked the car, and who was sitting there for quite some time) had a friend join him. Kat turned on the windshield wipers just to clear the rain off and the poor baboon jumped like a mile high! Okay, so it was kind of mean but it was pretty hysterical. We took a couple of videos so I put them altogether into one.
There was also an incident of stupidity while we were at the baboons. There were these ladies in like an SUV kind of vechicle, and at first they were behind us. Apparently, we were too slow so they tried to pass us (which is fine) but I think she tried to on the wrong side and somehow she got kind of stuck somewhere and was having a hard time getting out. Eventually they made it and were pretty much right beside us, and the one lady rolls down the window to take a photo. Then a baboon looks at her and she SCREAMS. Like, screams bloody murder! We both turned and glared at her because it was just stupid. I mean it’s not like they were on their car or coming to attack them. The baboon that was sitting on our car just kind of looked over, as if to say, ‘wtf are you doing lady’ and looked back, haha.
After the amazing baboons we continued on to find an ostrich or two, rhinos, zebras, eland, sheep and giraffes. The ostriches were pretty far off in the distance and we were half worried they’d come poke the car, haha. But they didn’t… there was one that was pecking at the safari jeep though.
I don’t know much about the sheep, they’re Barbary Sheep and I had to look it up online to make sure I had the right animal… so yes, haha. Honestly, we didn’t pay too much attention to them. I think it’s hard to be really excited when you don’t know anything about the animal at all. Like I wouldn’t have been able to tell you it’s name.
Rhinos are huge. And I honestly had absolutely no idea that they were really that big. Seeing them next to the cars really showed the size. I mean, I guess I always knew they were big in a sense… but I never knew they were that HUGE! Of course there was one of them who was being a party pooper and staying out of the rain, but I can’t really blame him. If I was a rhino, I’d be that one. Haha. Kat felt inclined to take a picture of the rhino’s bum.
After the rhinos we were extremely excited to be moving on to the giraffes! Unfortunately we couldn’t tell if these were evil giraffes, because there were no trees around for them to eat all the leaves off of (SO OTHER GIRAFFES MAY DIE) but they’re pretty awesome animals. I apparently saw a giraffe when I was a kid, but I have no recollection of that whatsoever. So this is the first time (that I remember) seeing them in real life. I absolutely love the way they chew. The shelter (as you can see) was too short for them, so only their backs were shielded from the rain. They didn’t seem to mind too much though… granted, they didn’t have much choice. Right beside the giraffes were the Elands. I never knew what these guys were either, before I looked them up.
There were a lot of zebras! Which surprised me somewhat because I’ve never seen so many at once, haha. I love the patterns on them and they can apparently tell each other apart due to the different patterns in their stripes. I heard before that their stripes are like fingerprints — no two are the same.
So as you can see, animals like yaks (which is the coolest name ever because it’s really fun to say and sounds ridiculous… yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak, do it like that), Japanese deer and then a bunch of other ones that I didn’t know. I also didn’t know the difference between Japanese and North American deer because frankly I never thought about it before. I love the picture of the black animals that are standing in the rain… I won’t lie, I have no idea what they are, haha. The ones that are behind a fence were an endangered species and they someone crammed themselves into the rocks there to avoid the rain. You can’t see it well in the photos, but the males have amazingly cool antlers. They’re kind of twisty.
Reserve number seven was the last of the reserve and held animals from North America (and I guess one from Europe). For the most part, it wasn’t really like OOH AHH for these ones because they were animals that are pretty common. Like bison and deer. I’m not saying it wasn’t nice to see them, because honestly how often do you get a chance to get that close to them? The deer were hilarious though. There’s this one male, who was practically blocking all traffic from getting through. But these stupid people kept inching closer and closer to him. I wished he’d kick them or something, but he didn’t. :/ Instead the tour bus came around and beeped so he moved off the path, but he was so cute!! And stubborn, haha. Two of the deer started to fight, which was neat to see. I’ve always seen videos of it, but obviously it’s not the same in real life. I also never knew that the sound they make is so much like a goose. O_O It really shocked me (as you can tell from the video). The bison looked DRENCHED and we figured they’d smell like a wet dog, but ten times worse. I wonder if that’s true… but it would make sense.
And that was the end of the reserves. My favourite one I think was with the baboons, and seeing the giraffes and the zebras. So from there we parked and took a look around the gift shops. Some of the stuffed animals were ridiculously adorable and I kind of wanted to buy one, haha.
They have shows there, with the animals so we wanted to catch at least one or two of those. We decided in the long run to go to the petting zoo area (which only had a few animals anyways) and then at 2:00 head over to the parrot show.
In the petting zoo, there were deer, goats a camel and two alpacas. Camels make possibly the weirdest sound I’ve ever hear come out of an animal and I was totally not expecting it. This camel was really loud and kept screaming (or whatever it is he’s doing). He kind of intimidated me, haha.
Then we got to the goats. When you’re a kid it’s always amazingly fun to pet the goats and honestly, I had probably too much fun this time around too. They’re cuter than I always think of them, haha. We didn’t feed them, but for a while we were the only ones in their pen. There was this one goat that stood on top of a tree stump and didn’t budge from there. It was like he was surveying his pen, haha. He reminded me of Watson, because Watson likes to sit on the chair in my mum’s room and people watch out the window. Once we were there for a little bit the goats got used to us, and then kept coming up and trying to bit our shirt, pants, scarf… whatever they could. At one point I was petting tree stump goat and another little guy was standing right on my foot.
I LOVE the one who had his head in the log! I didn’t see him pull his head out, but Kat said that when he did he started sneezing, haha. I think he was also the one who was standing on my foot. A couple of them jumped up as well, you know like dogs do? On their back legs… and another one rubbing his face on Kat’s leg, haha. They were pretty cute. I wouldn’t mind a pet goat.
Right near the goats were the deer and I finally understood the difference between the North American and Japanese species! They were only two Japanese deer and they were darker in colour. We got the little pellets to feet the deer and the Japanese deer kept getting butted out by the other ones who were far more aggressive.
Just before the parrot show started we took a look around at the birds that was in the cages. Oh my god they were noisy. Aki and Hiro can be noisy, but I think I’d go insane if I lived around those birds all the time! The parrot show was really cute and they had one bird who could kind of sing O! Canada, haha. We also learned that peacocks are one of the least intelligent birds. They had a ‘trained’ peacock there and she said they say that lightly because all they can train him to do is run out there, stand on a green board and eat some bird seed, haha. They had another bird who could pick up cans and put them in the recycling, which was pretty cute. Oh and a bird THAT COULD RIDE A BICYCLE. No joke. Watch the video. There were flamingos there as well and it’s the first time I’ve ever really heard the sound they make. At one point it seemed like they were singing together like a choir. Along with the parrots there was a bat. Her name was Abbey.
We also went to the birds of prey demonstration, which was good as well. The funniest part is that they had a bird named Muriel, which is my mum’s name. Well, she was one unattractive bird and looked like she had this tuft of hair… kind of witch like. There was also a Bald Eagle which overshot his landing, and he landed outside of the fenced in area. Luckily they got him back in time and no kids managed to get to him… because he really could tear you apart.
The guy who was doing the show was great, but kept stumbling on his words. Then he asked for a few young volunteers to help him with the next part of the show to demonstrate how this one bird was just as comfortable running on the ground as he was flying. They were going to have a race. Well a bunch of kids came up to the gate and he counted about five and said okay, you guys can all come in… which lead to A MASSIVE STAMPEDE OF CHILDREN. At least twenty kids went inside the gate, because I guess they misunderstood and parents kept sending their kids up when he was CLEARLY having a hard time. He explained that he made a mistake with word choice, but he felt bad and couldn’t really say no to the kids.
But the poor bird was totally crowded during the race! I think under normal circumstances he would have given the participants a run for their money in the race, but because there were so many kids there he came somewhere in the middle. A lot of the kids weren’t really listening as well, so I felt bad for the guy who was doing the MC. But overall it was a great show and very educational. We learned that the Bald part in Bald Eagle used to mean ‘White’… as the Bald Eagle isn’t actually bald.
Right after the birds of prey show was the elephant show called the “Elephant Round-up”. But before I talk about that, I’m just going to finish with the birds. There were a lot of peacocks wandering around and we managed to find a female peacock with a baby, as well as one that was completely white. Why are the male peacocks so much more beautiful!? I know it’s to impress the females, but why can’t human men be like that? Haha. No, I’m totally joking but don’t you ever notice in the animal world the male of the species is so much cooler looking? Like the male lions have those awesome manes, bettas, the females are just ugly. They’re all brown and boring. Anyways, we also saw some hawks and a Snowy Owl. The owls were really beautiful, and the one in the photo looks like it’s making a ^^ face, as Kat pointed out, haha.
There were more flamingos in their own little section and they had young ones! I never knew that baby flamingos didn’t get their true pink colour until after they were a year old. Personally, I think they look almost cooler all black, pink and white… seeing as those are three of my favourite colours.
Last but not least for the animals, were the elephants! Like I mentioned before, we saw the elephant show which consisted of four of them. I can only remember the names of three - Daisy (she was the oldest, 30 something), Piccolo and George (who was the youngest, he was 8). They did a few tricks like showing off how strong they are, and how they can use their trunks to pick up even a small coin (they did a demonstration on a loonie). When they came out originally they were all holding the tail of the elephant in front of them which was super cute.
There was a little girl sitting next to Kat who was super excited about all the elephants and kept yelling out ther names, haha. It was refreshing to see that. After the show the trainer lead Daisy around so the kids could ask questions and pet her if they wanted to. I think that’s a cool idea.
After the show we headed to the Elephant Lookout where we saw baby Chuck and his parents. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a real baby elephant and they are one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen in my life. He was honestly just like a little child and you just wanted to hug him or something. Chuck had a hard time eating his hay unlike his parents and frequently got side tracked by a stump or rock, haha. He was way too cute. The video I took is of a little part of the elephant show (where the one elephant played the drums and the others danced) and then the rest is of Chuck and his parents.
Just as a really random side note, if you listen to the voices of the people talking in the background of the video they have a really distinct Eastern Canadian accent. Like from out east as in Nova Scotia, P.E.I or in that direction. I could tell as soon as I heard them talking and then when my mum saw the video she commented on it too. I think that accent is one of the most easy for me to recognize, haha.
By then we were pretty tired and had seen what there was to see, so we headed home. We have no idea how we ended up in Burlington without taking the highway, but we did and went to this pub to have dinner. We ended up back at my house and watched Test the Nation for a little while, had some tea and Kat went home. It was a really fun day and I’m so glad we got to go!! I’ve wanted to go to the African Lion Safari since I was a kid and I would definitely go again.
For the most part, the animals look like they’re happy to be there. A lot of them were born in captivity anyways, so they don’t know anything different. But there weren’t any animals I looked at and felt bad for, except for the elephant that was doing the elephant rides. They were $5 a ride and we considered going, but decided not to. He looked so sad, and just walked around the same circle over and over and over. Wouldn’t that make you go insane?
But yes, like I said it was a lot of fun and yes, we took a disgusting amount of photos. The sad part is these aren’t even all the photos we took. O_O
I think I’ve covered mostly everything that happened… and it’s definitely time to wrap this up! If you made it to the end, congratulations and thank you. <3
P.S. Melinda, the animals wanted us to tell you they’re very happy there. AND NO THEY’RE NOT BEATEN IF THEY SAY OTHERWISE. ^^
There’s nothing like being waken up in the morning by the obnoxious screaming of birds. Okay, so really mine aren’t that bad and they don’t wake me up often. They’re pretty quiet, but for some reason they were nosiy this morning and I couldn’t sleep at all. They kept chirping and picking at stuff and it was driving me batty. Of course now that I’m wide awake, they’re nice and quiet.
But anyways, I looked over to notice Aki was biting her nails. O_O Is that weird? For birds to bite their nails? I’ve seen her do it before but for some reason it never struck me as odd until now. I guess because I never really processed it.
The photo to your left, is Aki. Just for reference. She looks cute, but she’s kind of evil.
Again, not another video blog but instead a video of my birds. ?? (Hiro) is usually the sweet one and won’t fight back when ? (Aki) picks on him. But, when food is on the line ?? (Hiro) takes control and fights back! They both like to eat right from the food bag, providing they can get inside.
This wasn’t really a video blog post, but instead a video of one of my birds, ? (Aki) eating chips. She loves sour cream and onion and regular chips. Any other kind and she’s not too impressed. She also likes eating cheetos.
The other one in the cage with her is ?? (Hiro) who won’t try anything new if you offer it to him, but admittedly does like tea. I’ve caught him dunking his head in my tea cup once or twice.
