Wild Things

After a delicious, hot Italian lunch we drove to Salinas and visited a small hot spot for celebrities… animal celebrities that is. It’s a place called “Wild Ones”. It’s a one hour tour through a home for animals that are trained for the movies or have been donated by former owners who decided there are some animals that really aren’t supposed to be pets, like alligators. Duh. A trainer will walk you to each cage, give a brief history of the animal, how it got there, if it had been in movies, and then would teach you about the species. It was very interesting. I learned a lot. They had a hyena, which was Brad’s absolute favorite! Brad is quite fascinated by them. He made a joke about wanting a hyena as a pet. I would be way too distracted by their hideous faces. I think I would just spend my day staring at it wondering why God made it so darn ugly. If you really want to wonder at God’s creativity think about this: a hyena is “designed” to run up to 25 miles an hour… forwards and… backwards.

There was a puma, I think it was a puma, that was a year old. It was too young to know that no matter how much he tried he was never going to catch the housecat that was following our group around. The trainer said he hated that cat and tries to get it every time it came near. He would crouch in a corner of the cage, inch forward, and would finally leap towards the cat. Too bad it was surrounded by metal bars. Maybe one day he’ll find a way.

Kaeley listened intently to every mini lesson. She always found something to ask. Why were there tufts of hair on the bobcat’s ears? Why was their tail a little short and a little long at the same time? What did they eat? Is that one older than the other one? How did you find these animals? Nathan liked the animals, the lion especially I think. Alynna sat on Brad’s shoulders and yelled a hello to every animal. Thankfully she didn’t scare any away this time. She would repeat the name of the animal over and over and over again with a big smile on her face. Then she would throw her face into Brad’s face and scream,
Daddy! Bear!” or whatever animal we were looking at. She was quite delighted.