A trip to the Night Farm

The Man and I took a trip to the Night Safari last night, which is probably our last.

First of all, the food is a complete rip off. They know that we suckers are stranded in the depths of Mandai where there are no other food outlets around, so the zoo’s restaurants easily hold monopoly over our diet choice. For the $60 we paid for 2 “Bongo Burgers” and 2 cocktails from the “Uluphant Bar”, we were served portions meant for mousedeers. I suspect our money goes to pay for the half-naked Arnold Schwarzeneggers playing bongo drums next to us and howling jungle tunes. Oh ya, there are ants crawling into my fries as well.

After dinner, we went for the Creatures of the Night show. The Man was very excited because he has never attended an animal show before so he has many burning questions. I had a lot of fun making up stories to bluff him. I said the setup of the mini cliff is so they can re-enact the scene from Lion King where a very well trained baboon will hold a very drugged out baby lion and christen him Simba in front of us audience. He then ask what will happen if the animals refuse to perform and I explain that poor performing animals are publicly eliminated in front of the rest of the animal actors because they are on a “survival of the most obedient” training regime. (To my dismay, the commentator later expose my lie when he told the audience not to feed the animals as they are on a “food reward” training regime. Damn!)

The show started with the commentator asking the audience not to use flash photography. He repeated it about three hundred times. Then he ask the audience (directed mainly to the kids at the front row) what do we do to people who uses flash photography and the big kid next to me i.e. The Man excitedly shouted back, “Throw them to the lion’s den!!” (-_____-“) Next, the lights dimmed and some alibaba jungle music came on. The commentator narrated some lame lines about how when the sun goes down, the jungle comes alive (cue: cricket sounds) and the animals come out to play. At that point, a hyena is supposed to come out and jump off the cliff setup but he obviously was not in the mood for that so we sat there with bated breath for a good 5 minutes. No hyenas and the irritating cricket sound is really getting to me. Finally, the said hyena decided to come out for a stroll. No heroic jumping. He just walked across the setup and disappeared. The narrator improvised his script and said, “Yes, that’s how jungle animals are. You only see their shadows.” (Alright….)

The rest of the creatures of the night were not very co-operative either. The serval refuses to dig ants from a hole in a log, the other small creature who was supposed to sniff out grapes from the closed palm of a volunteer got it all wrong and the recycling otters refuses to drop the garbage into the bins. The only 2 animals who did what they were told was this bear-like animal who walked on a beam and did not fall off, as well as Maggie the python who was so drugged out you can see her eyes just lolling about in their sockets. They needed a macho muscled volunteer to play with Maggie and I wanted to auction off The Man but refuses to go, mumbling “Snakes eat rodents; they are dirty.”

The show was a non-event, and we left wondering what hit us. We proceeded to the tram station and sat in a carriage behind this bunch of high school kids on school holiday. The young girls were in giggles all the time and kept exclaiming loudly throughout the ride how very cute all the animals are…. except the bearded pigs. (The bearded pigs quite cute what; even the babies have beards.) The young boys were cracking lame jokes and making comments like, “Haha! Look! Tiger Balm sponsored the tigers. Haha!”

There was a staff announcer on our tram that was tasked to explain the animals to us but he wasn’t very good at it. I think he has done one too many shifts because he was speaking in a drawl and eating his words a lot. For example, he tells us we can get off the tram at the next station if we want to see the “leperdrill”. We kept wondering if that is a new breed of exotic animal or a cousin of the mandrill but it turns out, he meant to say “Leopard Trail.” Besides being a lazy speaker, he is also obviously MCP because when he was telling us about how the lioness has to hunt for food and when she brings the food back, the male lion gets to eat most of it because he is male, he suddenly proceeded to laugh to himself and said, “I’m sure all the men on this tram will agree that is the way it should be.” (HEH??!)

The rest of the train ride is somniferous. I was trying to keep from falling asleep (zzz) while The Man was on the lookout for big fierce predators as stated in the brochure but all we saw was a few hundred deers and big cows. “This is a freaking Night Farm, not a Night Safari!” he complain.

We finally saw some predators in the form of 2 very bored looking male lions. Yawning.

The Man: “Where is the rest?? Where is the lioness? The cubs?? Isn't it supposed to be one big happy family like on Discovery Channel?
Frou: Didn’t you hear the announcer? He said the lioness goes away to hunt for food and the male stay behind to guard the territory.
The Man: This is a ZOO! They don’t need to hunt for food.
Frou: Oh...

There are some other mysteries I couldn’t fathom as well. Like whether all the animals in the Night Safari are really nocturnal or merely made to stay up by the zoo owner. Take for example, the buffaloes. The announcer explain this is a particular breed from Africa which is good for farming. I am wondering how domestic farm creatures can be nocturnal since they need to work the fields with the humans during the day. The Man said this breed probably takes the night shift.

The animal I found the most interesting is the hippopotamus. Not that I even saw what they look like because all three of them are in the water with their butts sticking out. We learn that hippos can open their mouth to as wide as 150 degree (it took me a while to figure that this is close to a straight line) and while they look seemingly harmless, deaths cause by hippos (to humans) in Africa is higher than deaths caused by tigers AND elephants put together. But of course our lazy announcer didn’t tell us how such deaths by hippos occur which left us wondering - probably the Africans kena sat on? Or accidentally walk into the hippo’s gaping mouth??

Boys on tram: Haha! Thirsty Hippo (the brand of dehumidifiers) should sponsor the hippos. Haha!

Next, we were told that we will be meeting a big black and white animal in an open enclosure. The kids got excited and started speculating. “Zebras!” (The Man said not possible because we already saw them) “Pandas!” (Not possible because the SG Zoo probably can’t afford them.) I guessed it is the tapir, and I was right. However, my victory was celebrated with the tram breaking down right in the middle of the tapir enclosure and we have to wait in the dark while they fix it. It was dark, the air was still. It was just like the scene in Jurassic Park when the tram was derailed and the T-rexs are approaching. The Man and I kept looking out for ripples in the small pool of water nearby and discussed what we will do in the situation. I said I will just hide under the seat and hope the dinosaurs won’t see me but he argued that in the movies, the chances of survival are always higher if you run for it. While we continue with our seemingly intellectual discussion on how to escape from proverbial dinosaurs (as well as refund strategies to get the price of our tram ticket back), the kids were happily disturbing the lone tapir that was sniffing about our carriage, calling it an overgrown baby in diapers.

We finally came out of the zoo one and a half hour later, dying for a cigarette, and none too happy or excited about what we saw. We did learn many useless trivial facts about animals though, and one of them is that the tigers are great conservers of energy. If they don’t need to move a limb, they won’t. They can sleep up to 20 hours in a day.

With that in mind, we went home to play tigers. Zzz…..