{"id":484,"date":"2004-04-29T16:43:29","date_gmt":"2004-04-29T16:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wheresdrew.com\/blog\/?p=484"},"modified":"2006-05-07T13:58:20","modified_gmt":"2006-05-07T04:58:20","slug":"lions-and-chickens-and-bears-oh-my","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/2004\/04\/29\/lions-and-chickens-and-bears-oh-my\/","title":{"rendered":"Lions and chickens and bears, oh my!"},"content":{"rendered":"

A trip to the impromptu petting zoo.<\/p>\n


\nFirst off, no, I’m not being cute with the title.<\/p>\n

They really did have a lion:<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Okay, so it’s in a cage, and I kind of doubt they were going to let anybody pet it – but it was there just the same.This is one of those, “hmm, that’s a bit odd” moments that I’ve come to expect, but still get surprised by, as a part of living in Korea. I’d gone to the store today to pick up blank CDs and some DV tapes. Nothing out of the ordinary. As I went into the store (Home Plus, near the Ansan bus terminal, for anybody who’s really curious) I noticed some small white tents on the sidewalk between the main entrances. “No biggie,” I thought. “Probably a sidewalk sale.”<\/p>\n

Not quite.<\/b><\/p>\n

When I was coming down the escalator to leave the store I looked over at what I thought was a sidewalk sale. The sheep kind of clued me in to the face that it was something different. (Okay, they could<\/b> have been selling sheep, but I didn’t think that was all too likely.) I struck me as peculiar that they’d have sheep at Home Plus, so I went over to check it out once I’d exited the store.<\/p>\n

The lion clued me in to the fact that it was something weird.<\/p>\n

The bear confirmed it:<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Just a cub, and in a cage much, much to small for himself. He’s got so little room that he’s standing in his bowl. (Or maybe he’s a “special needs” bear.)The lion wasn’t faring much better. Her cage was also too small, and I don’t think she dug being right next to the bear.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’m sure she’d be chowing down on him if she could. I’d thought maybe she was drugged at first, since she’d just been laying in her cage, but she got up and started pacing (as best as she could) after a few minutes. The “zoo” wasn’t open yet when I was there. They still had about an hour before they started letting people come bother the animals. I’m kind of glad I didn’t have to see that, as I’ve heard bad things about Koreans’ behavior at zoos. (Excessively bothering the animals, throwing unauthorized food to\/at them, etc.)<\/p>\n

The lion and bear were the only two “exotics” in the menagerie, and the whole deal was clearly geared up for kids. I felt kind of bad for these bunnies:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I can just imagine the torment they’re being put through. There was a serious “barnyard” theme going on here.<\/p>\n

Chickens:<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A donkey:<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sheep, goats, a chicken and a duck:<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Here’s a group shot of the whole crew:<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Strangely, they also had a “domestic” section.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This was the best of the dogs, so he gets another pic:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I can only imagine how pissed off this cat was:<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The sign at the entrance proclaimed the setup to be the<\/p>\n

“Mobile Animal Unit.”<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I hadn’t realized there was a need for such a unit, but I guess there is. The sign wasn’t very representative of what they brought along either. I can see not brining an elephant (even a baby one), and I suppose the lion sort of made up for the lack of a tiger, but how hard would it have been to get a few monkeys or a turtle? It would’ve been nice to break up the overly domestic theme they had going on with the showing.<\/p>\n

Sure, an alligator might snap at the visitors and the monkeys would probably decide to fling poo at some people, but could you blame ’em? This is no way to expose kids to animals. Or animals to kids, for that matter. I say, put ’em together and let ’em mix it up properly. The “law of the jungle” is a good lesson to learn, and one you can’t really teach too early. <\/p>\n

Oh, all right, let the kids get up to middle school age before they go one-on-one with the lion.<\/p>\n

^.^<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A trip to the impromptu petting zoo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}