A couple of weekends ago, Ryan and I made a trip to the Johnson family reunion in Kalamazoo. Ryan has always been quite a trooper about going to these type of events, when I can only imagine they have to be a bit intimidating. There are usually 100+ people, but he does a great job.

Anyway, after returning home from the reunion I got to spend some time with my sister Missy. We usually have a good time together, and this visit was no different than normal. She had mentioned that my sister Carrie, while by my parent's house, had seen one of Missy's old friends. When Carrie told her that it was Chubby, Missy nearly jumped out of her skin. You see, when Missy and I were about 10 and 6 (respectively) we both got life sized stuffed animals. Hers was a lifesized polar bear that she named Chubby. Mine was a life-sized dog who I named Eskimo. We had both thought our beloved stuffed friends had been destroyed in the "flood" of 2003 which happened in my parent's crawl space, but apparently our friends were more resilient than we had anticipated and were still alive and kicking. We both ventured into the crawl space and dug them out for a brief reunion of our own. (I, however, had to convince Missy that I wasn't planning on "murdering" Chubby and I just wanted a blog picture - to which she reluctantly pulled Chubs out from his hibernation for).

Perhaps it was seeing our old friends, or that my work had a company picnic this weekend, but I braved my fears and went to the Milwaukee Zoo with Ryan today. We were planning on getting some grub, socializing a bit, and then checking out the animals. Usually seeing animals and smelling the petting zoo is enough to make me break out in hives and have some severe breathing problems, but I figured I could "put in my dues" and go to enjoy the day with my hubby who has been trying to get me there for the past year and a half. Now, I had a classmate in Bible school who is one of the Elephant keepers at the zoo and she had told me that whenever you go you should wear khaki shorts and a navy blue top because the animals will respond to you more since that is the uniform of the zoo keepers. I laughed, but decided to try it anyway. Ryan and I went in to the exhibits and I had forgotten about our said attire until getting to the Silverback Gorilla exhibit. We walked up to one of the windows and our friend, Cassius noticed us and, NO JOKE, struck this pose for our picture. He kept throwing us glances to make sure that we were watching him, but he held the pose. After a couple of minutes he moved by one of the other windows, where we followed to watch him. As I was walking towards the window Cassius karate kicked the window and the ten people watching ALL jumped back in shock. I moved easily towards the window where my new friend kept looking at me. He looked sad, and kept throwing me glances. Finally his lip starting quivering and he head butted the wall and tried to karate kick another tree next to the window. Too bad we don't have the picture but right below Cassius read a sign stating the between the hours of 11am and 2pm the gorillas are periodically taken for 15 minute sessions of "BEHAVIOR ENRICHMENT". Hmmm, sounds like my friend may have needed some enriching. Anyway, Ryan and I were amazed that Cassius kept staring at me, lip would quiver, he'd beat his chest and let out a howl and then charge at the window, pick up big sticks threateningly, etc. It was then that Ryan looked at my clothes and realized that it was feeding time, and I looked like a zoo keeper. Our friend was hungry. I was kind of sad for him, but also SO intrigued by his outburts. I'd never seen such an actively restrained angry animal before. It was unusual, and incredible and sad all at the same time.

We also saw a bunch of other neat stuff too, the bears came out to greet me, as did the tiger, hippos and rhinosaurus. It was pretty neat to see such responsive animals. My advice, as long as there is thick plate glass between you and the gorillas...wear khaki shorts and a navy t-shirt to the zoo, things will be much cooler.