Whipsnade Zoo the Palindrome Tetralogy (Blog 505)

Yesterday, I went to Whipsnade Zoo for the fourth time, hence the fancy word in the title. A great day out with my dad, brother, sister in law, two nieces and one nephew! But… how about some fun number plates that I saw on the motorway on the way there?? Well, what the number plates looked like anyway, not the exact plates, that would be stalker and borderline if not fully criminal. Here you go…

Wing Gojo, Lazy Ohh, Lego Error, Hikty Thug, Laser ENTJ/ESTJ, Uzi Lyric.

There you go, one of the first things we all did was walk to the warm aquarium and then the humid butterfly area because it was cold pretty much everywhere else. You know the song that goes ‘everywhere you go, always take the weather with you’? Sadly impossible. The warmth was a relief for a while though, I even took off one of my hoodies which was nice, leaving just the one and a shirt. In the aquarium there were fish that were apparently extinct in the wild, but as they looked like any other fish it didn’t really matter. They did look pretty cool, but so do all fish. Again, it didn’t matter. Soon after, we saw a crocodile/alligator. My dad asked our little group what the differences between the animals were, expecting no one to know. He really can’t help himself, but actually my sister in law did know and gave an explanation. My dad essentially self powned.

In the butterfly land, sound effects of nature played on speakers, I presume to make the lack of butterflies seem more exciting than they really were. I think there were only about ten if that, that I noticed anyway. In the same area, my brother showed off the power of A.I. on his phone by asking it crazy questions and getting crazy impressive and in depth answers. However, he took a picture of a small collection of leaves and asked the A.I. how many there were in the photo. The A.I. said it was a difficult question and said ‘roughly’ 6139 leaves (or whatever super detailed answer it was to the amusement of everybody) actually there was just a few hundred. Again, powned. I wanted to really test the A.I. by asking the age of the butterflies in days, but my brother ran out of the service by that time. I also wanted to ask it ‘what am I thinking of right now?’ but that would be creepy. ‘What is the butterfly thinking?’ would be good.

Next up came the giraffe gazing. The animals smell surprisingly similar to sheep, surely they’re not related to each other. I mean, both eat grass but if I were to eat grass, would that make me related to a giraffe or sheep? Who knows. After that, we all got nice and cold ice creams, on a nice and cold day, as we all stopped walking so we could chat and eat and really let the cold get to us. I got a popcorn flavoured Magnum. Very nice, but a bit of a misleading name as the ice cream was small. The price was large, but what company would ever boast about that?? Next we went to the lions. There were pictures of the animals with different facial expressions and one pic was an ‘attacking face’. I was hoping no one would ever see such as face in real life at the zoo and the picture was just there for curiosity, not a warning. The lion we did see was either asleep or dead, certainly not attacking. Phew!

Next came the train journey around bits of the zoo, also in the cold. It was only going slow but technically that did make the wind a little worse, making the weather even cooler. And of course there was to be no warming walking on the train that was made very clear. A little too clear, a bit authoritarian. After that my, brother got me a hot chocolate in the children’s play area, but I didn’t fully trust him when he said he would check for no caffeine content, so I eventually followed him. I asked the shopkeeper as well and he said the drink was fine, but I STILL felt uncomfortable drinking it, so I gave most of it to my dad. On the plus side it didn’t really taste of anything anyway. More standing around doing nothing followed. I could have played the Rugrats theme on the metallic instrument, but someone was butchering Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star over and over again so I didn’t have the opportunity. And of course no one would recognise the theme anyway.

After that we visited the farm animals which were fairly meh, but at very least we were technically allowed to touch some of them (I think). Sadly though, touching a lion is a good story, touching a goat isn’t. Then we went to the gift shop where I bought chocolate raisins! Perhaps a little too many, because as I’m typing I’m feeling just a little bit sick, but only for a short while I’m sure. The Kitkat and Cream Egg I also ate today didn’t help things. The kids bought toys and that was the day out! For whatever reason, we didn’t see the penguins this time around, probably because the weather was cold, penguins like the cold (I presume) and my dad can’t stand the thought of anyone including animals to be happy. No monkeys were enjoyed either but boy did I appreciate the warmth of my dad’s snug car when we started to drive home. On the travels, I almost saw number plates saying…

Hunto myopia and Ayib Lazin’ .

And that was the fab day out, bye!