Franklin Park Zoo Trip

I will start this entry with a few pics from the Franklin Zoo in Boston Massachusetts

Magnificent aren't they? I have tons more pics and Dani is giving me some of hers too. It was quite a day. Where do I start.

Ok at 3:10 AM the telephone rang. Urghh my wake up call. My eyes focus and I answer the phone with a raspy smokers morning voice. I hear Dani's voice, are asking me if I was awake. I wasn't really, but I forced my eyes opened and sat up. As soon as she knew I was standing she let me go so she could get ready and I could get some stuff done myself.

Oh my good lordy lord. I can't remember the last time I had to get up that early in the morning. I wasn't quite with it. I went and got dressed and got gramma done, which she wasn't too happy about. Can't blame her, but I had to get her changed before I left. She didn't want breakfast and was back asleep by the time Dani came to my door.

Dani was in a foul (but funny) mood as she hadn't had any coffee and we couldnt' find anyplace open that had coffee. We were running a hair behind and were just going to make it to the parking lot on time. When we got there there were few people and no bus. Dani quickly spotted a guy that had a coffee in his hands and asked him where he got it. He told us and we were off like a bolt of lightning. Funny thing, one sip of her coffee and her mood dramatically changed. Go figure.

The bus was running late and never arrived to the parking lot until 5:30 AM. In the mean time we gabbed, she drank coffee and I smoked while I could. The bus arrived and we were on out way.

When we were all settled a thought came to my head. Dani gets pretty bad car sickness. I said, "How the hell are you gonna do on this ride.. with your car sickness and all" She said she would do fine she thought because she had rode all the way to North Carolina in a Greyhound and was fine. That's cool. We weren't 5 minutes into the trip and I could see a look in her face that said she was not going to have a very fun 5 hour bus ride. And she didn't.

She maintained, no puking until we were just about in Augusta, the state capitol. We were stopping to pick up some students at the Augusta campus. The herky jerkyness of the starts and stops were just too much for her tummy to handle. I could tell she was about to do it. I said should I move so you can get to the bathroom. She said no I will get through this. Her eyes shut. Then opened again, really quickly. She took a breath like a woman practicing lamaz and ... promently began reaching for a bag or anything. She wasn't going to make it to the bathroom. Well.. she kinda missed. She was dizzy, blurry and well.. it kinda went half in and half out. Yeah. The smell was pretty bad. She ran to the bathroom to finish as soon as she could. But people noticed. She was dreadfully embarrassed. I felt really bad for her.

She puked a few more time before reaching Kennebunkport for a pit stop. I went in and got her some dramamine and she handled the rest of the trip without incident. She was still extremely naseus, but mananged. She looked soooo aweful sick. I was hoping she felt better once the motion of the bus stopped. And she did. She was very very happy.

The zoo was amazing. There were lions, gorilla's, Zebra's.. everything. No tigers and the Giraffe's were in since the ground stil had some icy area's which are dangerous for them.

We gota tour of the vetrinary aspect of the zoo. That was really neat too. The head vet demonstrated how they traquilize the large animals and gave us the opportunity to dark a fake wolf with a blow dart too. Way cool. We also saw where they keep all the medicine supplies and she told us about this one drug that use strictly for animals that is so powerful if a human was pricked while drawing up the med it would instantly kill them. They have to fully protect themself, call the area ER and tell them they are drawing up the medicine, and have a second person ready to administer the vaccine incase the vet does accidentally stick herself. Then, once it's drawn and given the ER gets a call to let them know it's over. Now that is one powerful drug. It's used on the large animals and primeates.

A few years back you might recall hearing on the new about a gorilla that escaped that zoo by the name of Little Joe. She told us the whole story of that and showed us how he got out and everything. Was kind of neat to hear it from the perspective of the animals caregiver than from that of the media.

Ohh some thing else way cool. The vet took us up behind the gates of the lion area. We got to go out back where they feed them and watch her feed him some treats. We were close enough to feel his breath when he roared. It was funny, he was making loud purring like noise. Some of the girls were all " aweeeeeeeeee he is purrrrrrrrring how cute" Cute? Are you kidding me? a 500 pound male lion is not "cute". More like terrifying. Beautiful. Magificent. But not cute. Then vet over heard this and remarked, "By the way, that is not purring. He is rather ticked off. I assure you he would like nothing more than to bite my arm off right now, it's more of a pissed off sound, definatly not content" Ha.. take that frilly foo foo girl who thought the large cat beast was purring at her!

The rest of the day we meandered around the zoo looking at all the different animals. Dano bought me lunch, chicken fingers and fries which were very very yummy. We had some very fun times. Being scared to death by a tarantula, terrorizing a hippo and watching a gorilla eat shit. Yup, fun times. The kind of time you can only have with your best bud. Dani had a much better trip home. She had her dramamine in her system and was fine on the way home. We talked just about the whole way home. Just girl talk really. Nothing major. The time to do that was nice though.