Jingle in the Jungle

Jingle in the Jungle

Elephant reproduction and feces information table

Last night I attended "Jingle in the Jungle" at the National Zoo. Some quick facts about the event:
- all you can eat finger foods
- all you can drink beer and wine
- setting: elephant and hippo house of the national zoo.
- ticket cost: $50
- smelled like big animal poop
- rest room house was a shuttle bus away (or 1 minute walk) from the elephant house
- it was fucking freezing here last night. it snowed.
- put on by an organization named "Young Professionals". This name makes me want to barf.
- animals were all out of reach of the young professionals.

I arrived at JIJ around 6:15 or so with my friend Sarah, who overheard some girls at the door say something like
Girl A: "Ew, it smelles like poo in here."
Girl B: "Yeah, I'm not sure how long I can take this."

These girls apparently weren't aware that they were in a zoo or didn't realize that elephants and hippos, unlike hot girls, do have to shit sometimes. Poop smells like shit.

The finger foods:
-cabot cheese
-some vegetable sushi rolls
-ginger bread men cookies
-some round ginger bread cookies with some filling and powdered sugar sprinkled on top
-saki oyster shooters (no pizza shooters unfortunately)
-nacho chips and salsa
-pretzels
-hummous and pita

Some of the beers:
Singha, Singha Light, Harpoon, Magic Hat, Rock Bottom Brewery beer on tap. When everything was gone they put 12 cans of Budweiser on the beer table. This pleased us greatly. At least one member of my group stuffed a can in his coat right before we left to drink in the shuttle bus.

I had not been to the zoo since moving to DC. I guess it takes an "all you can ____" event to get me motivated sometimes. Maybe someday the Young Professionals will put on an all-you-can-grope event in a strip club or all-you-can-snort event at a police seizure room.

I of course left uncomfortably full and adequately intoxicated. Those round cookies were delightful. I must have had six or seven of them. The melange of food in my stomach was pretty volatile. It's tough to hold it together when you're full of beer, oyster shooters, cookies, and sushi. Somehow I kept it down, probably because I'm a fucking souljah.

The real soldier of the night was my friend G. At one point, Sarah, G, and I were about to head outside to the restroom area. G didn't make it. He spotted one of the hottest girls in the place that he had met at some point before and started chatting her up. About an hour after getting back from the bathroom G was still at it with the girl. I was ready to piss again and he was still maintaining. Finally, the girl left, and he made his move to the rest room. I was moved by his performance for a couple reasons:

1) The place was crawling with girls and there were plenty of dumpy to average looking girls that were were drunk and ready to talk to any dude that would give them the time of day. I know this.
"Hey, you! You have to talk to us or pay a toll! Tell us where you're from!"
- crazy drunk young professional girl from Minnesota who later groped me on her way out

G didn't settle for this garbage. He didn't wait for his ship to come in. He sailed out to sea in search of something greater. Something real. Something attractive. He took the opening he had, having made her acquaintance, and made the most of it.

2) The man played through pain. Like an aging NFL starter with a hotshot rookie breathing down his neck, G wasn't about to leave the game. Although he REALLY had to piss, he knew that the minute he left some other dude was going to step right in and try to be all charming and shit. Like Rex Grossman resisting the temptation of throwing a short dump off pass to a wide open running back, G told his thinly stretched bladder to go fuck itself. It's game time.

G ended up getting this girl's number and laying the foundation for going out with her with sexy results. That man belongs on the horse trailor!

The animals at this event were large and fun to look at. The elephants were of the Indian variety, which tend to be smaller than their African counterparts. There were three elephants, aged 58, 30, and 5. Fact: elephants can live to be 50-70 years old. The five year old was male, as was easy to tell from the fifth leg. Later in the evening the elephants were eating bamboo. The five year old had a bamboo shoot by his trunk and was jamming it between his legs. I asked a girl next to me what he was doing.

"Having a good time."

The elephant was pleasuring himself with a piece of bamboo. The fifth leg was no longer hanging down. The little guy's mother was standing right next to him.

There were a few varieties of hippos. The pygmies were about the size of a pig, and the big one was fucking enormous--probably the size of Gilbert Brown. They seemed to like being submerged in water and when not submerged in water, eating. They were some hungry hungry hippos. HAAAAHAAAAHAHA!

For some reason they had the skull of the father of the largest hippo on display right next to him. I hope this was more comforting to the hippo than it would be for a human.

Before we left, I wanted to get a picture of the table with information about elephant reproduction. It was pretty awesome. Sarah (not sober) grabbed a vial with milky white liquid in it and started laughing hysterically. This brought an employee over to the table.

sarah: "Is this elephant semen?"

expert: "It's simulated elephant semen."

sarah: "What's that?"

me: "It's pretend elephant semen."

They had a device on the table that was used to artificially inseminate an elephant. It had a really long tube. Elephant birth canals are quite accomodating it seemed. There was for some reason a gigantic elephant turd on the table. It was donated by the 30 year old elephant and had a clear coat of something over it to preserve it. Sarah picked it up and smelled it, which was delightful to watch. She reacted in horror to the smell.

expert: "Still needs another coat."

She then picked it up and handed it to her boyfriend John.

sarah: "It's poop!" or some such shit.

expert to sarah: "it's so funny that you find that so funny!"

Geez, yeah, I guess there is nothing remotely amusing about a large laquered turd on a display table also containing simulated elephant semen and a semen deliverer.

Needless to say, this event was definitely worth $50. Money well spent. Bon weekend!