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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Lobsters and Turkeys and Rattlesnakes, oh my!
For the past week or so, it has looked like Animal Planet around here, only significantly less cute. No rescued chihuahuas finding a new home with their very own boy, no baby raccoons being rehabilitated and then released, and no bear cubs being raised in somebody's kitchen.
It all started when I let my nephew and niece choose the restaurant for dinner last weekend, and I seriously need to stop letting them do that. In the past ten days, they've dragged me to Red Lobster AND Old Country Buffet. Those are the two absolute worst restaurant chains among all the bad restaurant chains in existence, are they not? I was sort of excited when our seafood expert, a.k.a. waiter, told me about the wood fire grill they'd installed. That would probably cook up some yummy seafood if they didn't insist on coating everything in a layer of grease and sprinkling on an inch of powdery Dorito seasoning first. Before we could sit down and eat that deliciosity, though, we waited for a table for a few minutes, which turned out to be most pleasant, because a very friendly seafood expert came out and introduced us to a lobster! A lobster who can do tricks!
Please notice the distance at which Sophie has located herself from the lobster. That's as close as her folded-arms, stompy-foot self would get, no matter that it was a perfectly trained lobster that can do sit ups! There was no bribe I could offer that would get her an inch closer. The seafood expert put the lobster on its back, rubbed its tummy, and commanded it to sit up, at which point it did! Then, he stood it on its head, using its claws for support, like a tripod, and rubbed its tail until it went to sleep. So odd. And don't worry, it's not inhumane. Well, not compared to being plunged into boiling water and steamed alive, anyway.
A few days later, Kelly and I went out to run some errands, which included going to the grocery store. Kelly decided that she was craving a hamburger in the worst way, and since it was windy and cold and too late to fire up the grill, I agreed to drive over to Wendy's. We turned into the parking lot, which is actually the parking lot of the Honeybaked Ham Store on County Road 42, and were greeted by a FLOCK OF TURKEYS. FLOCK OF TURKEYS has to be capitalized because FLOCK OF TURKEYS! In the suburbs!
What you can't see from the photos is just how aggressive a flock of wild turkeys in a suburban parking lot can be! Geez! There were times when I thought they were going to try and flap their way into the car. And also, "gobble gobble gobble" is exactly what turkeys say.
Question: do turkeys fly? Oh, sure. I could google, but what fun is that? The reason I ask is that we did not see them flying. Instead, when they were finished rejecting our mushrooms and toasts, they moseyed across the street. We've seen turkeys on the side of Highway 13, along the river on the way to Valleyfair, and I'm just wondering if this is that same clan of turkeys, having been out for their constitutional. Or more like a Turkey Breast Cancer 3-Day. It's short fly, but a looooong mosey.
In any event, Kelly's burger craving went away, and she opted for a turkey sandwich at Jimmy John's instead.
Next on Animal Planet, Grandpa sees a rattlesnake and makes Cousin Bob pose for a photo with it:
Bob could take a lesson from Sophie and fold his arms, stomp his foot, lower his cheek to his shoulder and flat out refuse to get down on the ground with that snake, but he didn't. He's lucky he isn't now sporting two fang marks in his neck.
I guess there is one more Animal Planet show, and that is the story of a little girl who named her sweet hamster Xelia. Xelia Elizabeth Lee. If you want to see the little girl get really upset, you can refer to Xelia as "Fudge," a moniker coined by a fella named Braxton, who, by the little girl's account, is a really super-annoying boy who happens to be a friend of her brother's and eats all the ice cream when he comes over.
Tune in next week and see if Fudge gets eaten by a rattlesnake while on a visit to Arizona with the children to see their grandparents!
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