Picture a room. A group of people sitting in a circle on metal chairs, trying not to make eye contact. All of them shuffling their feet uncomfortably.
A new guy walks in. Everyone looks at him and gives a little smile of encouragement. He takes a breath and begins, "Hi my names leftover". They reply, "Hi Leftover".
He continues, "It's been 3 months, 1 week, four days and 3 hours since my last trip to Bali".
The group nod and the big guy sitting on his right wipes a tear from his face...........
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You might remember me from JBR's such as "I can't believe I haven't been banned yet", "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..." and my personal favourite " Kidnapping and the white slave trade", (with apologies to ardjuna2000).
Anyway, that aside. In one of my ramblings I made a big whohar about the Bali Zoo. It was an awesome experience and one I won't soon forget, simpy because I was lucky to escape with all arms and legs intact.
If you don't already know the Bali Zoo is undergoing a transformation driven and partly funded by the owner of the Peel Zoo, Tony GREENWOOD, here in Western Australia.
While this message isn't technically about Bali I thought I'd throw it in to encourage people to visit the Bali Zoo and to hopefully encourage people to visit the Peel Zoo in Mandurah also.
We went to the Peel Zoo yesterday and I have to say I can see why the Bali Zoo, with Tony's help, has improved out of sight.
The Peel Zoo isn't full of exotic animals nor is it huge and overwhelming, it's just a really nice little zoo where people are encouraged to interact with the animals much like at the Bali Zoo.
Admittedly the interaction isn't always invited or welcome.....deep breath, reach for the tissues........We were walking through the zoo (wife and two kids in tow). A family of Indians (the turban variety) were walking just behind us. I reckon we made their experience so much more rewarding.
We'd walked all of 10 metres before I had a flock of pink and greys dancing to everyone's favourite tune, "Dance cocky dance". I even broke out a couple of moves. The up and down head nod and side to side finger wave.
It was kinda funny to watch and hear the Indian guy who followed try on the "Dance cocky dance", in his best Bollywood accent.
Following this I was attacked by a couple of fluffy white geese the size of small water buffalo. Now I've got a goose at home (really!) and mine isn't fluffy, but it does attack me too.......bloody geese.
We even ran into Tony who was dead keen to hear about our Bali Zoo experience. He's a nice bloke and desperate to see the Bali Zoo do well. In fact he's heading over again in a few weeks.
I won't relay every gory detail about my day at the Bali Zoo, only because the therapy sessions cost me a fortune and I've only just started sleeping through the night again without the nightmares.
But if you want a bit of a chuckle it's somehwere in the archives.
Back to the Peel Zoo. There are a heap of walk through aviaries and a heap of smaller aviaries throughout the zoo and many of them have pink and grey gallahs and sulphur crested cockatoos in them. And as you would expect there are the odd sign or two warning people not to stick their fingers in because "Freddy" or "Molly" bites.
You'd think then that they'd have the more dangerous, blood sucking cockys in the smaller secure aviaries instead of the walk through aviaries where the public are permitted access........
As we entered the last aviary of the day we were greeted by a friendly loking cocky who was the native Australian bird version of "So you think you can dance".
When I laid the "Dance Cocky Dance", on this guy he went off. He was bobbing his head, flapping his wings while he sang along. My 8 and 4 year old thought it was great. Little did we know that this would be the moment they developed their life long fear of birds.
The cocky, walked down the wire towards us. I gave him a little scratch on his back (I was smart enough to be careful). After a second or two the friendly dancing and singing cocky turned into a blood thirsty, charging jaguar, lion, tiger thingy......
This bloody bird latched onto my shoe and proceeded to maul my right foot to the bone.
The aviary is about 20 metres long and the cocky was attached to my leg the whole 20 metres. Remember the Indian family.....they saw what happened to me and wouldn't even walk inside. Discretion is the better part of valour.
Do you know how hard it is to get a freaky cocky off your foot without actually trying to step on it?
That's about it. The Peel Zoo was a great experience and like the Bali Zoo I thoroughly encourage everyone to visit........just make sure you wear steel capped boots.