Showing posts with label zoo. Show all posts

don't be naughty at the zoo


When I taught kids in Vietnam, we used to sing a song called Don't be Naughty at the Zoo to help the kids learn imperatives. You can actually see a video made by a different Vietnamese English school here - skip to two minutes in, unless, like me, you melt at the sight of small school children saying Hello, my name is Linh and I am a kangaroo. As you can see, the song is pretty annoyingly catchy, even if I think most children are sensible enough to know better than to touch the bear; I could always tell when someone had had to teach that lesson, because they'd be humming the song in the staffroom all day. ANYWAY, the point is, the Mysore Zoo was clearly the inspiration for this song. Yeah, there were animals there too, but the signs were the best part. 



That dead peacock is ALL YOUR FAULT.


Tigers and zebras: the world's deadliest animals. (PS, how awesome is the look of shame on the guy's face as he's being led away by the police?)



Oh god, the day monkeykind figures this one out, it's all over (insert your own Planet of the Apes joke here).


No mimicking the animals. Also, no Bluth-style chicken dancing.



My favorite animal in the zoo was actually this wild monkey baby. I think he looks so sad because he wishes he had a sign of some sort too. Or maybe the signs are really up to discourage the wild monkeys from taunting their captive monkey brethren, who knows. 

bad monkey!


So, you know that bad monkey who was attacking people in Mishima? Someone caught it! They didn't even get the reward, because they were a city employee assigned to catch the monkey (best job description ever), but at any rate, the citizens of Mishima can breathe easy again, because the attack monkey who not only bit old ladies but also snuck into houses and apparently stole food from refrigerators (!) is safely behind bars. Or chain link fence, actually, since the monkey now lives in the tiny zoo at Rakujyuen park, where it's clearly the main attraction:


There's even a contest to name the monkey - zoogoers are invited to submit their ideas. Because the monkey appears to be a girl, Iain and I both submitted "Mikka Jr." I think it has a good shot of winning. Anyway, it's important to vote.


Above: when prompted for an explanation for the suggested name, Iain wrote - since Mikka means beautiful in Japanese - "Because it's a beautiful monkey!" in Japanese. 


There are a lot of other cute animals at Rakujyuen, but they haven't attacked anyone lately and so were less interesting.


Although these goats really didn't like each other for about 2 minutes. Then, inexplicably, they were cool again.


Red panda! 


Also, attack monkeys aside, Rakuyuen is really beautiful, so the free tickets that Iain's student gave us turned out to be especially appreciated.




I've been making my own knitting patterns up lately, so I also used the pretty scenery as a chance to get a few photos of some hand-warmers I'm knitting for Iain. They're not done, unfortunately, so he could only model one, but I'm pretty happy with them so far. 



At any rate, it's rapidly becoming hand-warmer weather here, though it's still gorgeous outside at the moment: 




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