Tidbits Of My Life!

The reason for lack of pictures is lack of desire to take pictures of myself after work... because I look like this:

But, since you asked, there ya go!  Me in my hot costume.  Literally.. it's hot.  It's covered in sweat, just like my entire body in this picture and my hair is a frizzy mess due to constant sweat and sticking sticky headphones on my head all day.  Blech!

Speaking of my costume, take a look at my patch on my right arm.  The one that says where I work.  That's not really a patch.  We call it our "target."  Because when you do stupid things you get punched there.  My first trainer told me about it, and warned me about an older woman who's a trainer who likes to punch her trainees in their targets when they make mistakes.  I was fortunate enough not to have her as my trainer.

However, I was unfortunate enough to sit beside her in the break room one day.  She started telling a story to the people across the table about a trainee she had who went up on the curb.  "And so I punched him!  Right in his target!" She said.  And she punched me!  Me! I was the innocent bystander listening to her story!  So funny.

Below is a picture of how FLIK cards should not be dealt with.  (no worries, this picture was taken well before park open)  Those cards were a stinking crazy mess.  And instead of helping, I thought I'd take pictures!

I don't really have any more pictures.  Legal pictures that is.  Since technically all backstage pictures are off limits, and that's the only time I have to take pictures of the trucks.  But suffice it to say, they are coming!

So, more random tidbits of my life:

I was driving the truck around empty the other day (reason explained later).  The animals tend to do more interesting things when there are no guests in the truck, I've noticed.  Except that one time the hippos let out these huge loud noises and yawned really big.  That was awesome and the guests went crazy.  Totally got an applause at the end of that one!  But I digress.  So the other day the mommy elephant and her baby (we have a lot of those, but a particular pair...) were hanging out under the water super close to the truck with nothing but their little trunks sticking up out of the water, and they were intertwined together.  So stinking cute!

Then the lion actually stood up as I came around and started walking towards me.  It actually kind of frightens me when the really big animals walk right towards my truck.  Particularly the white rhino since they actually can come right up to the truck.  But anyway, it was the first time in my life, I think, when I actually thought that a lion looked slightly scary instead of relating him to a soft, gentle Mufasa or Aslan.  This lion looked almost ravenous!

While I'm on about lions, the male and female were cuddling today under the tree.  Well, cuddling as much as lions can cuddle.  Super cute.  Again, they only did that when I was driving alone.  When I had guests most of the day I didn't see them at all, and the few times I did see the male he was just laying there.  Then at one point, the male sat up and moved his head and my whole truck freaked out.  It was soooo funny!

There's a part of the safari when music comes on.  Every once in a while I'll say something like, "Oh!  This is one of my favorites!  Sing along, if you know it!"  No one knows the song, it's just some random Swahili song.  And no one ever sings along, and really I don't expect them to.  I just say it to say it.  However, one time I said that and three little kids in the back started "singing."  Cutest sound EVER!  They were trying so hard and I had to turn off my mic I was laughing so much.

I had a little girl who was very concerned today that we keep the lions so close to the addax, and don't lions eat them!?  How do we prevent the lions and cheetahs from eating all the rest of the animals?  She was so concerned, but I assured her that the addax were safe.  I left out the part that in real life, that's just how it works.  Sad, really.

My favorite guests are the parents with little kids.  My least favorite, I recently decided are teenage boys and Brazilian tour groups.

Teenage boys because they spend the whole ride screaming about how "I just saw the elephant peeing! Hahaha, did you see that!?  He was peeing! Hey, hey talk about how it was peeing!"  and "Is that real?  I don't think that's real.  In fact I'm pretty sure it's fake.  Why do you pretend that's real?  You shouldn't lie.  Are you sure that thing's real?  It looks manmade!"

And the Brazilian tour groups because they spend the whole ride singing "La Cucuracha" over the sound of my voice.  I'm not even kidding you! That literally happened today!  30 of them.  Got the truck to themselves, and not a single one spoke a lick of English.  I just gave up spieling because they were too busy singing their songs (they really did break into a chorus of 'La Cucuracha' for quite a while through Ituri Forest) and yelling about the "olifants!"  The only English word they did know was "Stop!"  But they kept yelling at me to stop in places where I couldn't stop.  So annoying.  But for some reason, this group applauded at the end too.

Lots of groups applause at the end!  I love it when that happens!  It feels great!

To explain what I said earlier, we have some shifts where we drive empty trucks around at the end of the day.  That's because the park is closed, so the ride is closed.  But the animals need to stay out longer and the animals are trained that when the trucks stop, it's time to go in.  However, the animals can tell the time of day anyway, and often I'll find them standing by their gates anyway.  The lion paces a lot at that time of day.

This is really long, so I'm going to finish it here.  But there are just a lot of random things about my job I'll have to document at some point.  For the record, I love it!  I love my job!  And I'm scared to be so incredibly happy and satisfied with my life at this point because I'm scared that means something bad is going to happen soon.

But that's just a part of my personality. :)