it’s something…

I asked the family what they wanted to do today and the reply was an enthusiastic “meh”, so I figured I would go out and take some pics. I decided to head over to my favorite photographic theme park destination, Animal Kingdom.

I figured I would grab a fast pass for the safari then check out the goings on over in Asia, but for some reason they had closed the fast pass and the standby line was 50 minutes. OK, so I figured I could go watch the gorillas for a bit then come back and check the wait time.

I stopped and grabbed a few pics of the meerkats then went around to the gorillas. As I am walking around taking pics, I notice there are a bunch of people walking around with the conference badges. You know the badges they give to conference goers so they know who the other conference goers are. I notice that all of them seem to be from animal related facilities, mostly zoos.

Anyway I am taking pics of one of the males and out of no where one of the other males comes running up to ham and throws a palm frawn at him. This turned into a 20 to 30 minute “play” session between the two of them…a play session that from the beginning seem just a little bit…teh ghey. I don’t think I am the only one thinking along those lines, because I heard someone behind me say “that’s not very Disney”. I am pretty sure he said this around the time that one of them was sticking his finger in the other ones ass then sniffing his finger…

So the lady standing next to me during this play session is one of the conference goers. She is talking about how she knew these two gorillas when they were little and that they had been together for a long time and stuff. She asks someone further down the fence if they see this kind of play in the wild. And I realize that the crowd around me of 20 or 30 people are all from the conference. As the play session ends and the crowd disperses I ask one of the keepers what the deal is with the conference goers. She tells me they are all in town for a conference about gorillas. That would explain why they all got pretty excited about the play session.

A few minutes later one of the other bachelors has climbed up a tree. This also draws a huge crowd of “gorilla people”. I hear someone say “John you don’t ever see this in captivity.” John is the same guy that was asked about play in the wild…John and his wife work in the Congo. So the guy in the tree makes his way down with a nice big branch to snack on, and as soon as his feet hit the ground two of his buddies go after his branch. Naturally it ended up in the hands of the dominate one.

I ended up talking to the keeper for a bit more and she tipped me off that I should hang out for a bit longer because they would be taking the boys inside soon and it is pretty neat to watch how they stage them to go inside.

So in all I took about 300 pictures today, after I got rid of the really bad ones I still have 170 or so. Some of the ones I did keep are a bit blurry, but they are all of the play session and I am OK with them being blurred, because it demonstrates how fast these guys were moving.

I would have liked to include some of the pics along with the story, but it is going to take a while to upload all of the pics. Anyway when I manage to get them uploaded they will all be in this gallery. For know here is one of my favorites…