Eddie Izzard & Graham Norton: When Baboons Attack

After about an hour of walking around looking at crafts and being screamed at from across the fairgrounds by greasy, snaggle toothed carnies the Amazon and I got bored at the big Hee-Haw county fair. By the time Preacher Bob jumped in front of me for the third time, trying to save my soul, waving his pretty little pink copies of the New Testament in my face, I'd decided I needed to get home anyway.

County fair or not, Eddie Izzard was going to be on The Graham Norton Show at ten and I needed to get situated in front of the boob tube.

I have my priorities.

Of course it was hilarious.. with Izzard and Norton (and Harry Shearer) how could it be anything else? Somehow though.. the conversation turned to the evilness of baboons. Apparently Norton witnessed some sort of chaotic picnic lunch devastation by a wild baboon while vacationing amongst the wild things (Dude.. seriously? Next time.. just go to Miami.. or come back to Dollywood, we'll do lunch.)

When a disagreement erupted between Izzard and Norton over whether or not baboons were consciously, deceptively evil or perhaps, simply wanting a nice picnic lunch, the Amazon and I both laughed so hard we had tears streaming down our cheeks.

You see, the Amazon and I often have the same argument. It all stemmed from an incident at the zoo, one I wrote about a couple of years ago on my old blog.

Here's a re-post of the incident:

"Tuesday, March 08, 2005

The Girl Child and the Angry Baboon

I took a vacation day Friday to go gather the Girl Child from college. I left early Friday morning, picked her up around noonish and took a side trip to the zoo. Anyone who's read my posts in the past understands that I'm a critter freak. I love zoos, I even worked as a volunteer at the zoo back home when I was thirteen. I guess I should make myself clear, I don't love all zoos. There are some pretty crappy ones out there, especially the roadside monstrosities with big animals in tiny cages pacing and panting. I have a problem with circus' as well, I stopped going to them years ago.

Sorry, didn't mean to go off on an animal rights rant. Back to the story.

The Girl Child and I started off in the "North America" exhibit, making a bee line for the polar bears. Seems we got there just in time for their afternoon nap, huge hairy critters sprawled out on rocks looking like a bunch of frat brothers on the morning after an endless night of chemically altering their consciousness and assorted acrobatic mating rituals.

We moved on to the other exhibits, which were spaced kinda far apart. The African section of the park was really nice. There was this huge dome.. thing, that you walked through which had inside and outside areas for some of the animals on display. Most of the baboons had gone inside where it was warmer and there was a sort of deck area outside where you could get a much better view. The Girl Child and I ventured outside away from the small crowd and watched the baboon "children" rough housing and pushing each other off of rocks and trying to get their mother to put the baby down and pay attention to them instead. Every once in a while the big male baboon would run over and try to establish order over the youngsters, mostly ignored, kinda like human parents.

At one point the big male looked over at us standing on the deck and came bounding over towards us. He sat down close to the glass right in front of the Girl Child. We were like.. awwwww.. a Jane Goodall moment!! She sat down on the deck in front of him and he reached forward and grabbed his toes and rocked back and forth on his lil baboon butt.. lookin' all cute. Then he pushed his nose against the glass and made faces at her, it was so cool.

I was half expecting him to start doin' something perverted, because it's been my experience that all male primates seem to do that if you get too close.. again.. much like humans.

Then.. suddenly..he jumps up making that psycho-rabid "I'm gonna eat your eyeballs" kinda face...smackin' the shit out of the glass, screeching like the soundtrack of a bad Tarzan remake. I do believe the Girl Child came closer to crapping her pants than she has since her Pampers days. Of course, all of the zoo patrons inside the dome thingie watching us, were pointing and laughing hysterically. I was laughing pretty hard myself.

I should make the Girl Child a nice t-shirt with a baboon on the front. Or a pillow for her bed.. yeah that's it. I'm so not going to let her live this one down."

And.. I haven't. She still gets this look of sheer terror on her face whenever someone mentions baboons.. the exact same look Graham Norton had as he told the tale of his primate encounter.

Personally I think the poor things are just misunderstood and appreciate a nice picnic.

I hope ya'll are enjoying your weekend. We'll talk again soon.

Later Taters!