Big Bronze Bison Ballsack

I took my kids to the North Carolina Zoo last Friday. This is a picture I snapped of them posing next to the giant bison sculpture that the zoo had placed near the "prairie" section of the zoo. There, they have elk and bison (buffalo) on display. Being that I love huge, shaggy, smelly beasts (incidentally, so does my wife...), this is one of my favorite parts of the zoo.

Is there any more poignant setting in the world to watch people than at a zoo? Probably, but I still made a few observations while I was there.

For instance...if your FUPA sticks out further than your boobs, a midriff shirt is not what you should be wearing. If I look over and it appears that a tub of cottage cheese is spilling over the top of your shorts, we have a problem.

If your back is so hairy that someone mistakes you for a display and tries to communicate with you using sign language (Koko want a kitty?), maybe a t-shirt would work better than that wife-beater.

And, really, while I will gladly stare at your ass as two big slices of nicely-rounded-rump are hanging out of the bottom of your shorts, this is an outfit more apt for a stage with a brass pole and mulleted guys named Randy ready and waiting to shove dollar bills into your garter belt. The zoo? Not so much.

Now, I appreciate the effort that teachers put forward. I also understand that keeping tabs on fifty rowdy children unleashed upon the hapless, captive wildlife of the zoo, but still. Could you maybe offer up a little bit of "wait yer damned turn" when the fat slob is trying to take a picture of his kids sitting in the helicopter in the African veldt display? Thanks.

Finally, one little note to the troupe of skanky teenagers watching the baboons. Um...that one that you're talking about...he's not pulling the other one's tail for play. Well, maybe for play. But not the kind of play you're talking about. He is, in fact, most decidedly not trying to wrestle with that other baboon. See...he's mounting her. For sexual pleasure. The tail pull might be a kind of baboon foreplay...it could also be a type of baboon bitch slap. I realize you might not have taken biology yet, but still. The one on the bottom wasn't screaming for the sheer joy of playing leap frog.

Yeah...we didn't stay at the baboon pen for long.

I will now direct your attention back up to the picture of my lovely children in front of the bison statue. My kids wanted their pictures taken with pretty much all of the bronze statues in the zoo. This is one of the best ones. I'm kind of proud of myself for a) remembering to bring the camera and b) not fucking the picture up too badly.

However, the story of the bronze bison doesn't stop there.

Right after we were done with the picture, my son, Tank, turned and said "Daddy! This statue has poop on it!" I didn't think much of it, but then I looked up and found him under the statue, manhandling the bison's very pronounced scrotum. "Look, Daddy! They put poop on this statue! Gross!" At this point, my daughter became interested and, she, too, was climbing under the statue to check out that big round ball of poop hanging between the bison's legs.

Clearly, this was going to be a defining moment of my parental career.

"Um, let's go look at the real bison. Maybe we can see some elk, too! Stop playing with that, and let's go!"

Yep, I took the cowardly way out. Rather than explain to him that the bison statue was a boy--and what a boy!--I did the old bait-and-switch and distract them with the promise of more animals.

Fortunately, the zoo set up some fake geysers, which completely made the kids forget about the bison statue, and the bison statue and its poo were quickly forgotten.