A few weeks ago, Kirsten, Mallory, and I took the animals to a Water Fair. Why a Water Fair even exists is beyond me, but Little Zoo was hired to go and show off some animals (and hopefully relate them to water, I guess?). So Kirsten and I got to go! It was the first time I met Kirsten in person which was super exciting. It was totally natural hanging out with her, laughing, and just talking animal-stuff. She's a really fun friend!

We arrived at the Water Fair and were immediately swarmed with people! Some people were jerks, of course. There's always a few. But most of the people were really nice. One especially trusting lady just handed me her baby so she could pick up her other son to see the animal I was presenting (or guarding, as the case may be). Want to know what the animal was? The alligator. Another lady said, "Oh we're not supposed to touch the alligator? So what would you say if I did this?" She moved her hand in circles above the alligator's head. I wonder if she could tell from my expression that I wanted to reach across the table and strangle her? Instead, I just said, "Well, I'd say, dear god, please don't do that again. Or I might also say, wow you really want to lose a finger."

How do people not understand that it's an ALLIGATOR? A small alligator, yes, but AN ALLIGATOR! What is wrong with people?

Or how about the guy who tried to poke the Great Horned Owl with a balloon-sword? I wanted to kill him, too.

I guess those folks make for interesting stories, but the reality of it is that there were tons of really nice people who thanked us for all the information throughout the day. So, thank god for them! We showed off the tarantula, the armadillo, a corn snake, a king snake, the owl, the alligator, and yes, the baby raccoon. Ty Coon, the two month old who still drinks out of a baby bottle. I told his story bunches of times -- he was picked up as a baby, and before he was surrendered to Little Zoo, the people cuddled him and fed him and played with him. Now he has no idea how to be a raccoon and can never be released. He's cuddly now but that will change once he hits maturity at about age 4. Hopefully he'll still be handleable by the people he currently knows, and be able to be an education animal (like he is now) as an adult. If he'd been surrendered to Little Zoo immediately upon being found, we could have released him into the wild. It's kind of sad.

He's a lot of fun to hold, but he's wild and unpredictable, so we don't let anyone in the public touch him. They all asked to, of course, at the Water Fair, and all looked broken hearted when I said no. They still wanted to learn a lot about him, though, and took pictures. Because he was still being weaned from a bottle at the time, he tried suckling on my arm through my sleeve. It was the one thing keeping him really calm, so I just let him use my arm as a pacifier. People kept thinking he was biting me, but he was really just kind of chewing on me and sucking a lot. I ended up getting a raccoon hickey on my arm!

There were some cute kids and some very nice people, all with lots of questions. There were also more camera phones than I have ever seen in my life! And of course, now I want one. But that is neither here nor there.

After we packed the animals back into the van, we headed out, grabbed some burgers (Mallory's treat - she is so awesome!), and headed back to Little Zoo. What a fun day!

About a week later, Kirsten invited me to go to the L.A. Zoo! The company her uncle works for had an event there, and they could invite some extra people, so Kirsten invited me!! She is cool like that. We walked around seeing all kinds of awesome animals. Kirsten quizzed herself on all the animals' scientific names for her brutal class in which she actually needs to know all that stuff - family, phylum, genus, species. Possibly even more! We saw an itty bitty baby lemur. We also visited the animatronic dinosaurs and talked to them. And we saw a baby giraffe! Let me tell you - baby giraffes? Super cute. Just FYI.

We got lost, too, which was especially exciting. If by exciting, I mean completely anxiety-inducing! It was crazy, but luckily, we weren't separated from Kirsten's family for too long.

We also got lots of free food and ice cream and even got to decorate plastic visors with paint pens! At the end of the day, Kirsten's aunt wanted everyone to have something, and since I was the only one who hadn't bought something at the gift shop, she bought me a tiny stuffed animal hedgehog. It was very sweet of her! When we parted I got hugs from Kirsten, Kirsten's aunt, and even Kirsten's cute little cousin. Her family is really nice, and Kirsten is the bomb! All in all, a fantastic day!