Date: May 10, 2005

Author: Mr Chris Carlson

may 6 - omaha nebraska

today rob, ted, bekah and i all went to the mutual of omahas wild kingdom. of course we first hit the cafeteria, which was an abundance of delicacies; the mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and polish dogs with sauerkraut were quickly inhaled as everyone talked enthusiastically about the next stop, the primates. aside from watching the alpha male gorilla dote over his newborn baby,i was having a tough time watching the expressions on these creatures faces. one orangutan stared blankly into space whilst bashing its chin onto a treelimb over and over. another ape sat crumpled against a wall looking mopey as he picked his ear.another one was clearly drunk. also, a very cool and colorful wolf something primate was doing something to himself that looked very painful and should not have been in front of spectators. next up was the big cats. i guess it must have been siesta time, because everyone was out cold on the floor. except for the new guy, a jaguar with insane eyes who paced furiously back and forth along the window pane.

there was another loving family moment with a mother tiger and her 3 cubs all lounging and lavishing each other with attention. good feelings shaded over though when moms stood up and revealed that her front left leg was missing, and we all watched the massive effort it took to hobble over to the other side of the cage to lick at a huge mound of ground flesh. it was time to move on. . . for some reason, it feels like we just brushed past the larger mammals. . bekah told us that indian elephants have bigger ears, which could crush your legs while you sit on them. ted felt that the small waterless moats around the rhino cage were not enough to stop them from leaping over and killing us. rob said something about giraffes but i cant remember. . and nobody even wanted to check out the zebras.so we went to the aquarium. this was my favorite place. there are no expressions on a jellyfishes face, in fact there is no face, or even a brain for that matter, so they just look like they are perfectly fine with their situation of being piled into a cylinder of deep blue salt water. actually, it looked incredible. the shark display was really cool too, with the walkway tunneling through it rather than around, and they swam over and around you with deathly tranquility. rob was saying later that sharks have no feelings, they're just perfect killing machines. i liked the white one with spots and flowing tail. the seahorses and seadragons were amazing to watch also; who knew they swim using their backhair?

it was almost time to go, so we quickly darted through the desert dome out into the gift shop where robert purchased his manual on primates. he will be leaving the drumkit soon to become a primatologist. later that night we played at the sokol underground with local artists son ambulance and little brazil. they both sounded really cool. i hope we will be coming back to play the auditorium upstairs, it looks like it has a history - they might be giants even wrote a song about it - and maybe even do some gymnastics before heading to the kum n go for some sodas.

thanks omaha