If you come visit me in Alaska, the zoo is not a place I will be taking you. In fact, if you ever come to Alaska at any time in your life, don’t see the zoo then either. Oh locals rave about the zoo, but these folks are crazy. Just trust me; you will save an hour of your life. The Utica Zoo is 10 times better then this zoo. That should put things into perspective.
So we went to the Alaskan zoo on Saturday. Yeah, it’s not just the Anchorage zoo but the only zoo in Alaska. A little history for a moment: In 1966 there was a contest offering a prize of $3,000 or a baby elephant, added as a joke. Well this dude who won wanted the elephant. The company actually found an abused Asian elephant and shipped Annabelle to the guy who was like “what am I going to do with an elephant?” They kept the elephant at a nearby ranch which had heated stalls. People came to see her, cause how many times doyou see an elephant in Alaska. With Annabelle’s growing popularity in 1968 a zoo formed next to the ranch featuring orphaned, abused, and injured animals. The Jerry Springer Show of wildlife.
Annabelle was really depressed. They had her paint but decided getting another elephant as a companion would help more. So they got Maggie. Then Annabelle died from a foot infection because being locked in a small barn for most of the year didn’t allow her to move enough. Now Maggie was depressed because, dude Elephants aren’t supposed to be in Alaska. They developed a special treadmill to fix this problem but needless to say the elephant doesn’t use it. Poor Maggie keeps falling down and not getting back up, which is bad because if elephants lay down for too long it damages their organs. The zoo calls in the firemen to help lift her up because as Saturday Night Live stated this week, firefighters have so much experience dealing with elephants in Alaska. Maggie has been getting quite the media attention lately because they think she is going to die soon. It hasn’t helped that one of their camels, Knobby, died on Thursday. They got Knobby in March to replace Boris who died this winter. See God put animals in certain places for certain reasons. Camels and Elephants do not belong in Alaska and if Alaskans want to see them bad enough google images, that’s all I got to say.
Being the marks like we are, we totally exploited the animal and wanted to see the dieing elephant. But they closed the exhibit. They also had the brown bear and snow leopard exhibits closed which is the entire top quadrant of the zoo because it was so small. The animals looked very sad and dead-like. They usually had only one of each animal and they kept them in very small cages. We felt bad. The only interesting thing that occurred is that next to the Raven cage was an un-caged Raven and feathers were rustling and beaks were chipping. So the only alive animal at the zoo was one we could have seen from our house. Good to know.
We went to the Moose’s tooth after the zoo to help cheer us up. Very cool atmosphere, very good pizza. Then we went to get supplies for our BBQ. We tried Carrs which was a grocery store inside an enclosed mall. We got salmon for some grilling but the sign said $2$3.99. We thought it was 2-3.99 per lb. It was supposed to be $23 per lb. But the fisherman dude understood our mistake and gave it to us at our original price. Officially the most expensive salmon I’ve ever eaten. But it was so good grilling outside. The apartments around us are filled with interns from outside companies and they got to move in on Saturday. The biggest internship employers are the oil companies so lots of engineers and geologists are around. We invited a few of them up to chill with us before the BBQ. That night the parking lot was full of them playing soccer and throwing freebies. Being rotating Resident Counselors on duty, we have to distance ourselves somewhat from any large gatherings or parties, but I can see us picking up a soccer game or two with them. Perhaps a group night at the Blue Fox?
While checking on the noisy new interns out of our window, we saw a moose walking by. We all ran outside to see it followed by the oil kids. It just stood there eating grass as we all are oohing and ahhing at it while at a 40 foot safety distance. Unfortunately I was the only one with a camera and my camera doesn’t take pictures well at night. But yup real live moose chilling outside my crib. Let that be a lesson to you folks. Don’t spend money at the zoo. Animals will come to you.
(Picture: not at the zoo but at the mall with the grocery store. It's a brown bear caught and stuffed back in the '70's. Probably misleading since Kristen is really only 2 feet tall. )
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