This is my 100th blog entry. That's kind of neat.

A funny thing happened on the way to the zoo yesterday. Alice and I took a brisk November stroll around the Woodland Park zoo (at Zoo.org - Seattle gets the best domain names), taking advantage of our free tickets before they expired (thanks Andrea!). So much amazing stuff. I could write about the brutal bat fights, the budgie that almost took out my eye, the budgie that pooped on me, the budgie that ate too much. The angry, angry sloth bears.

But no. Something happened at the zoo that made me see things from a new perspective. We checked out the orangutans, and I was a little bummed because they seemed so depressed. The big fattie papa orangutan was just staring at people with his big sad eyes, and before long a smaller, more slender girl monkey came up to him, pulling on his shoulder, trying to make him come with her.

They retreated to another area. The female laid back, spread all her limbs, and then...


An alpha male orangutan in the act of cunnilingus, while a young girl looks on.

He totally went down on her! I couldn't believe it! I had no idea that animals had oral sex! But c'mon, geez, I would too if I was under glass all day. The best part of this was that this apparently happens so often that the zoo staff has a pre-loaded explanation.

Little girl: What are they doing?
Zookeeper: He's just checking for bugs! (exits)
Onlookers: (stifled laughter)

Part two is that they eventually engaged in coital activities, and the male went at it for a while, then gave us all a look through the glass (while still going) that said "Yeah, that's right - I'm hittin' that!" I refrained from pictures because I didn't want to have people get the impression I'm some weird exhibitionist monkey fetish guy.

The other thing the zookeeper said, before all this happened?

That's actually his daughter.

Have a great Thanksgiving everybody!