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Saturday, September 17, 2011

It’s a well known fact that elephants never forget. Although in Amelie’s case, they might want to make an exception...

On a Roll
Frankly the less they remember the better. Amelie might have been on a roll, but in this case it was all the way to the fire exit.

Obviously, as a caring and responsible parent, it’s not ideal to have your child doing a beetle impression on the floor of an elephant house, but firstly she doesn’t listen to a word I say, and secondly, I was past caring at that point. When you’ve just watched her wading through a flood with her sandals on, you don’t get too stressed by a bit of dung.

Quite honestly, if you thought Amelie got a bit wet at Nickelodeon Land, you should have seen her at Blackpool Zoo yesterday...

Which way to the ark?
Not even David Walliams has seen that much water in a day. I kept expecting Noah to sail past and start loading up the animals.

Things started well enough. We arrived at the zoo at lunchtime, convinced them that Amelie was under three, and before we knew it, she was cheerfully strangling a flamingo in front of its friends...

In the Pink
But as we moved from the pink flamingos to the red panda, the colour of the clouds started darkening too. By the time we entered the wallaby enclosure, we were having to put a brave face on the weather...

Hopping Mad
To be honest, from the moment we arrived at the zoo, I did start to wonder why we seemed to be the only people there. The entire ticket office was empty, and we barely met a soul as we wandered around the enclosures. It was as though everyone knew something we didn’t. Namely, the weather forecast.

But as we posed on the back of a hippo...

Hungry Hippos
... the penny, and the rain, dropped. It was as if the zoo had spent a fortune to make their Amazon Rainforest display more realistic.

Fortunately, we were only a stone’s throw (which in this case was a skim across the floodwaters) from the Children’s Farm, so we headed straight into the nearest barn...

Milky Way
That’s Amelie helping herself to a drink from the milk bar. She claimed it was a real cow, so I told her to pull the udder one. To be honest, despite seeing some of the most endangered, elusive and unusual animals anywhere on the planet, Amelie’s favourite attraction at Blackpool Zoo was that plastic cow. At one point, I genuinely thought we weren’t going to get her away from there before closing time. She milked enough to keep Dairycrest a float. We had to tell her to leave so many times that I ended up feeling a little hoarse. Well, stroking a donkey. It was the only way to de-stress.

With the deluge continuing, Lisa barricaded herself into the nearest cafe, while Amelie insisted I escort her to the penguin enclosure...

Pingu!
Which is fine if you have an umbrella. Needless to say, I didn’t. So while Lisa sipped a latte in the coffee shop, I followed Amelie through the worsening monsoon, as her splashing in puddles became wading through lakes, and her shoes turned the colour of mud.

It was worth it though. As the only visitors foolish enough to be outdoors, we eventually found ourselves alone in the ape house, allowing us to creep silently right up to the gorillas...

Going Ape
That’s the male silverback with his new little baby. And it was truly an awesome sight. Having seen a fully-grown gorilla close-up, I now have a new respect for David Attenborough. The man’s clearly a mental case. Frankly anyone who goes within a country mile of the creatures without six inches of toughened glass and a shotgun is a fool to himself. But from the safety of a well-designed enclosure, they were a joy to behold. I haven’t seen anything so intimidating and powerful since I first met Lisa’s mother.

We watched the gorillas both indoors and outdoors, without another human being in sight, and they genuinely made my day. Lisa’s been monkey-phobic all her life, and wouldn’t even let me describe them to her afterwards without oxygen on standby, but one thing I did tell her as we waded out towards the meerkats, is how pleased I was that the gorillas at the zoo were breeding successfully. As I said to her at the time, it’s a generally accepted fact that caged animals won’t breed unless they’re happy.

She turned to me in her rain-soaked hood, as Amelie jumped into another lake, and responded with just six little words: “Maybe that’s where we’re going wrong.”

4 comments:

Phil's Mum said...

Because you're not in a cage?

Dave said...

'a float'.  Boom boom!

Phil's Mum said...

I think that umbrella was money well-spent.

Phil said...

I'm glad someone appreciates my humour.