I'M sorry to report that all the camping slots for Honolulu Lite Night at the Honolulu Zoo this Friday have been filled. It’s a zoo in there,
bed bugs and allThat's the night I'm supposed to spend inside a bear cage as part of a two-day Homo sapiens exhibit. I say "supposed to" because as the night approaches I'm beginning to have second thoughts. I have no problem hanging out in a zoo cage during the day, especially one that's been cleared of bears and other heavily armed members of the animal kingdom. But then I began looking at some of the information the zoo puts out to publicize its little known night-time activities. Several nights a month, for instance, they have the "Zoo By Moonlight" event when you can take tours from 7 to 9 p.m. The press release says, "Do lions lie down? Are Lemurs Dreamers? What sort of monkey business goes on at night?"
Then I started thinking, yeah, what kind of things crawl around in the zoo at night? I'm not worried about big animals, like giraffes. But what about cockroaches? I mean, I see those big bombers cruising around my driveway at night. What must it be like in a bear cage?
I'll be asking about that when I do my final orientation later this week.
The zoo also offers overnight camping at certain times of the month. That's what's happening this Friday. The lawn in front of my Homo sapiens cage will be covered with campers. And I'm here to tell you that if I see anything crawling in my cage when the sun goes down, I'm hopping into the closest tent. Or at least the closest tent that looks like it's rigged to prevent small varmint intrusion. I'm no wuss, but after a full day of lounging on the couch in my habitat watching television, I'll need a good night's sleep.
Even if you aren't one of those who have reserved a camping space, you can still come by the zoo on Friday or Saturday and throw peanuts, tubes of Pringles or other delicacies into my cage. I'll be giving out some Star-Bulletin junk, I mean, logo merchandise to certain visitors. I also have a few of the official Honolulu Lite "Great Feeling, Less Taste" T-shirts to give away.
I haven't quite figured out how I'll be decorating my habitat. The entire authenticity of the exhibit already is threatened because I won't be allowed to swill beer and throw the cans behind the couch. And I've been told that I can't bring along my dog, Boomer, to stay in the cage with me, which is sad because I was counting on him to be my first line of cockroach protection. He's a great cockroach dog, up to a point. He finds them and smashes them. But then he rolls all over them, decorating himself with stray roach legs and wings. It's a dog thing. And frankly, not one of his most attractive features.
But you can't have dogs in the zoo, I guess for the same reason that they don't conduct tourist jaunts through local prisons. It just upsets the inmates.
I plan to have at least a comfy chair, television, computer, putting green, mini-refrigerator, picture of Mom and all the other comforts of home in my habitat. There are still a few details to work out, like, for instance, where I'll, well, you know, "relieve" myself. But, hey, anything they come up with will be a hell of a lot better than what's happening on the Mir space station.
There is a serious reason for staging this event, although it kind of escapes me now. Something about providing a dramatic juxtaposition between man and beast so that visitors to the zoo can appreciate yadda, yadda, yadda ... you get the point.
Oh, yeah, I remember why we are doing it. It's to celebrate the Honolulu Zoo's 50th anniversary and educate people to all the fabulous events and animals that the zoo provides. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Hey, I think I have a knack for this PR stuff.