Filed under: Uncategorized
P & I were about to celebrate our 5th wedding
anniversary. Old friends of mine did not bother hiding their amazement that I
had managed to stay cheerfully wed amidst the crapshoot of life. Divorces
already litter the social scene around us.
"Let’s go out of town!" I ventured. But airfare costs and giant
workloads soon dampened our enthusiasm for jetsetting out of town. So I
got online and scouted for local daytrips or bed and breakfasts. Tempting
to go back to Yosemite, but the only options
besides the $600+ room at Ahwanee, is the "unheated" tent
cabin.
Hmm. I like camping, but subjecting P to roughing it &
freezing his butt off whilst trekking to a shared potty in the woods on our
anniversary, would probably only remind him of all the difficult things he has
to live with…
One of my doctoral interns was recently proposed to in
Monterey. I went to the
Monterey website.
Been to the aquarium & cannery Row a dozen times already…what else, what
else…Hey! "Wild Things Safari Style Bed and Breakfast/Vision Quest
Animal Ranch"
The photos depict a thrilled couple gazing at a cheetah
perched on the railing of their cabin. My reaction to this photo: can’t
get too excited since this is rare, but how cool would that be!?
P’s reaction: I don’t really want to see it THAT close.
Me: But look how BEEEUtiful…
P: That thing can KILL us!
Me: Well sure, but it’s really not likely…
He reminds me that I insisted we go to Taipei zoo within weeks of the SF Tatiana tiger fatal maulings, after which he swore off all zoos. Also reminds me that I insisted we take pictures petting the alligator in Thailand, and swim with sharks and rays in Belize. I insist that humans are infinitely less trustworthy and more dangerous than animals. We explore the website together and ascertain that there is only 1 cabin left
on the night was plan to celebrate. The Giraffe Manor, or nothing.
He
starts Googling. Searching for any reports of animal attacks on humans at
this park. All that comes up is that the 500 lb. lion who resides there
has been a movie star and filmed attack scenes. You know, the Dreyfus
commercial lion, the lion in George of the Jungle. With a dubious look,
he goes ahead and books it.
So. We drive toward Salinas.
"What’s in Salinas?"
he asks.
The only thing that comes to mind, besides our animal destination, is the Janis
Joplin song, "One day up near
Salinas,
Lord, I let him slip away. He’s
lookin’ for that home and I hope he finds it But I’d trade all o’ my tomorrows for one single yesterday,To be holdin’ Bobby’s body next to
mine. Freedom’s just another
word for nothin’ left to lose, Nothin’,
that’s all that Bobby left me, yeah. But
if feelin’ good was easy, Lord, when he sang the blues, Hey, feelin’ good was good enough for me, mm-hmm. Good enough for me and my Bobby
McGee."
(Sing along now, all you readers of a certain age know this one)
But I digress.
We
cruise past endless rows of lettuce and strawberry fields. I start
reading about the National Steinbeck Center in downtown Salinas.
We feel sort of anti-intellectual that we can’t seem to name Steinbeck books
besides Grapes of Wrath. (We later
recalled East of Eden, The Pearl, etc.) Little Salinas is rightly proud of their Nobel
Laureate. We drive into the little ranch
and I start squealing immediately- there are spotted brown ponies, emu, a
zebra, donkeys, and llamas with sheep in the pens. A sole staff member
informs us that she can’t check us in for the B & B until 3pm. We
wander around for the 20 minutes ’til then. P walks towards small cages
where 2 baboons stare intently and attempt to communicate with us thickheaded
humans. As I begin to follow, I notice the wide gate shutting on us.
"Uhhhhh…honey? I think we’re trapped."
This
place is not a zoo. It’s a educational center as well as a site for movie and
commercial working animals. So all the animals are not only well fed, with
shining coats, but they are inquisitive and used to humans. The capuchin
monkey comes up and waves his bananas and reaches for us and babbles.
"I want to play with you but I think we’re gonna get busted!" We walk
further. A Siberian lynx stands regally, like a housecat times 20, then we see
Josef the Lion, the tigers, a huge hyena that looks like he leapt out of the
Lion king movie stills (looks like a dopg, yet more closely related to cats,
and hermaphrodites to boot), and a black bear named Brandi. (one can pay to
meet Brandi in vivo and get a photo of her licking/kissing your face). The next day we would meet some of the other
residents, such as the kangaroo, Puma, wallaby, Argentine mara, alligators and
ocelot.
The
staff person returns from her jaunt taking visitors to feed elephants.
"How did you guys get in here?!" I have visions of us being
kicked out before ever checking into our cabin. We mutter that we were hanging around waiting for her and suddenly the
gate closed on us. She accepts this, and
checks us in. Explains the cabin ground
rules. No Smoking. No Children. My kind of place!
There
are 4 canvas sided tent cabins in the B& B section. We are spaced all around the elephant play
area where there is a pond, shade, and lots of hay and grass and roaming
space. Each cabin has a small deck where
we all park ourselves with binoculars and observe the elephants as if we were
on a real African safari. We watch
Jasmine the zebra playing around with an elephant. Literally. She hops, skips,
and bumps around the elephant, and lets it warp its trunk partway around her
neck, and poke at her. At first we are
stunned that they are fighting, then delighted to see them frolic
playfully. Dang. You better have a
deeply trusting relationship to let a huge trunk go winding around your neck
for fun! The ostriches look angrily back
at us, and come running over every time we move closer. When I worked at PG&E I recall hearing
how a maintenance man checking on wires was viciously attacked by an ostrich
that tried to kick him to death. “Geez. Look at the size of those legs!” P and
I agree that ostriches are a sure indicator that birds indeed are dinosaurs. The staff bring two animals over to visit, a
giant, poofy haired, dark-eyed possum that is prettier than any possum I’ve
ever met in the wild. Also, a bizarre
active-nosed creature that suddenly looks familiar. “Coati!!” Oh, we met one of these as it prowled around the ruins of Tikal in Guatemala.
The staffwoman led a Coatimundi on a harness leash, it prowled around curiously
and rested on logs near the path. She
looked like a mix of raccoon (her actual species cousin)-anteater-squirrel-cat.
Inside
the canvas, there is real furniture, a bed with 2 heatpads, a rocking chair,
shelves full of giraffe décor, giraffe lamp and table, giraffe bedsheets and
planter…you get the picture. There is running
hot water, a fridge, and mosquito netting draped over the bed for ambiance. Even a TV and a space heater. It is freakishly cold this weekend, and we
sit in our tent as the wind flaps the canvas. We visit teeny downtown Salinas where apparently the only thing to do after 6pm on a Saturday is to see a movie
or play chess at Rollick’s café. Not so
great for the local economy, but fabulous for those of us who loathe tourist
throngs. We dine at the Salinas Valley
Fish House, eating t excess in our typical celebratory binge, and ordering ‘Death
by Chocolate’ to go. We snuggle that
night as the lion(s) roar and echo, and some other unidentified creatures join
in. P says this reminds him of the turkey-creature that tormented his sleep on
our honeymoon in Belize.
The
hands down highlight of staying at Wild Things? Breakfast. Around 9:30 the staff are spotted walking
toward us on the trail. They bear a
cooler of food, and are accompanied by Butch, who happens to be a 10,000 lb.
African elephant.
His big crinkled eyes
seem as if in permanent smile, and I am amazed at the long, wiry black
eyelashes. We’ve been fortunate to
fraternize with Thai elephants before, but they are puny in comparison to
massive Butch. The guide passes P a
plastic bag with fruits and carrots, and informs us that we can feed him by
hand. The long, muscular trunk creeps
over our balcony and the 2 “fingers” at his snout end begin to snuff and search
for the goodies. Butch is so big, that
in many of our photos, I can barely be seen behind that huge gray trunk. One at a time, he grabs an orange, and apple,
a carrot, out of our hands and curls his trunk inward to deposit it into his
mouth. After he’s eaten all the goodies
in our bag, he sidles up alongside the balcony – spanning almost the entire
length.
“You
can pet him, but don’t poke his ears,” the woman calls out. We run our palms along the massive torso and
ears, his lumpy head. Butch’s skin is so
bumpy that one barely believes he is real, it’s like being next to a huge
boulder. But then he blinks those big,
dark eyes, pokes you with his fruit-seeking snout, and swishes his tail. They bid us a good day and take Butch to
visit our neighbors in the “Big Cats Cabin.” We watch him pick apples our their hands as well, then settle down to
our carbo-loaded breakfast. P notes that
I always take us to places where we are the only Asian people around, often for
miles and miles or even days and days. Wild Things was a fab getaway, far way from not only Asian, but humans
in general. Perhaps in a distant future
anniversary, we’ll head to Kenya or some other African nation for a more thorough, actual Safari. But I know we’ll still remember gentle giant Butch of Salinas.
No Comments so far
Leave a comment
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
