I told this story to a few guildies a while back and decided to archive it in a longer format; so here is the story of The Great Flamingo Uprising of 2010 as told to me by my favorite cousin who was a keeper at the time.
In addition to the aviary/jungle exhibit, our zoo has several species of birds that pretty much have the run of the place. They started with a small flock of flamingos and some free-range peacocks that I’m almost certain came from my old piano teacher’s farm. She preferred them to chickens. At some point in time they also acquired a pair of white swans (Or as I call them, “hellbirds”) and some ornamental asian duckies to decorate the pond next to the picnic area. Pigeons, crows, assorted ducks and a large number of opportunistic Canada geese moved in on their own.
Now; the ponds that dot the zoo property (I don’t remember how many there are but the one by the picnic area is the only one with swans) were also full of ginormous koi fish, some of whom by now are at least three feet long. Sensing an opportunity to cash in on the koi, the zoo put up little vending machines all over the place that dispense handfuls of food pellets. I swear to god the fish can hear the crank turning, and will show up at the nearest railing, blooping expectantly at whoever happens to be standing there and doing their best to appear starving and desperate.
Like this.^ And they weren’t the only ones who learned to associate the sound with the imminent arrival of food. The Canada geese knew a good deal when they saw one, and had long since ceased to migrate anyway. They formed roving gangs of thug-geese and staked out their turf around the vending machines, ready to mug anyone with pocket change. Picture yourself as a small child squaring off with a bird fully prepared to strip search you while standing on your feet and yelling “HWAAAAAKK!!” in your face. It’s traumatizing to you and deeply hilarious to your parents.
Anyway.
The flamingos had their spot near the zoo entrance and never seemed to mind the presence of the other birds, as they kept themselves to themselves and didn’t really like the taste of fish pellets. The problem lay in that their shrimp pond was close to a vending machine. Ordinarily that wouldn’t have been an issue at all, but eventually the goose population grew large enough that one of the gangs decided to annex it. Being territorial little shits, they would harass the poor flamingos any time they strayed within ten feet of it. The flamingos tolerated this for years until one day they snapped collectively. Here’s a summary of the incident in chronological order.
1.) It was a hot day, so everyone in question both human and avian, were cranky by the time the zoo even opened. 2.) A few flamingos (let’s call them The Jets) strayed into the radius of the vending machine and were immediately confronted by the indignant hissing geese (The Sharks) 3.) Possibly due to heat and the simple fact that the geese had been giant douchebags for far too long, the flamingos decided fuck it, this time they were going to FIGHT BACK DAMMIT, and swarmed the geese en mass. 4.) Chaos ensued. The geese were outnumbered 4 to 1 but had the advantage of being able to scream for back-up. 5.) Hearing the shrieking Canada geese and the bellowing of the enraged flamingos, the peacocks came to the conclusion that the apocalypse had come upon them and began to gather in the surrounding trees in droves and wail in despair. Or cheer them on, whichever. 6.) NOISE 7.) Apparently one of the siege tactics employed by the geese is to shit explosively all over the sidewalks. Never in the grass. 8.) The geese, having secured reinforcements from all over the zoo, went berserk and proceeded to attack EVERYBODY who had come to watch be they human or otherwise. 9.) The flamingos were chasing/being chased by the geese through the crowd accompanied by cheers/wails from the peacocks in the box seats. 10.) Complete pandemonium when the zoo tram became stalled on the tracks by the flamingo pond due to battling birds. The Jets, sensing these were somehow reinforcements on the side of the Sharks, charged the tram. Adults were doing the duck and cover. So were the ducks. Small children were screaming, adding to the noise. People were slipping on goose shit and hitting the ground in the fetal position, only to be stampeded by the rampaging flamingos. 11.) The koi continued to bloop hopefully for food. 12.) Two of the geese were cornered by a rival gang of their own and were chased into the swan pond. Cue slow-motion. 13.) The swans detected an enemy presence in their territory and by god, SOMEBODY was going to PAY. 14.) The staff were having no luck in breaking up the fight and on the verge of giving up and just building another zoo elsewhere when the hellbirds stormed the battlefield, trumpeting battle-cries, to dispense feathered justice. The staff promptly dropped their brooms and fled. 15.) The uprising was squashed in less than two minutes. Number of casualties was unknown, feathers were flying everywhere and there was enough goose shit to build another bird. One staff member had been knocked to the ground and was left with a melon sized bruise courtesy of one of the hellbirds. Several children were traumatized, probably for life. The zoo eventually removed the vending machine by the flamingos.
The geese went back to being giant douchebags. Because geese.
birds ❤
I fucking can’t wait to get geese I’m so excited
all this shows is that swans AKA Hellbirds are basically the avian equivalent of tactical nuclear strikes
While this exchange is ostensibly the feather in many a John Winchester apologist’s cap, watching this scene gave me chills. Look at Dean’s face very closely. Do you see anything there of happiness, gratitude, or even agreement? Honestly I can read nothing in Dean’s expressions or body language that doesn’t look to me like tightly repressed bitterness and rage, at best impassive coldness. While making these gifs I was flipping through each frame to check for errors and I was struck by how motionless Dean is, how unnaturally still he holds while Sam is talking – except for that expression he makes in the sixth gif, which looks a lot like disgust to me. He lowers his eyes away as Sam says “we could have had Max’s childhood”.
Max was beaten by his father. Does it truly look to anyone like Dean is saying to himself “yeah, good thing we had dad or we might have been beaten”? Or does his rigid face and dark eyes say “I did have Max’s childhood, and you would have too if I hadn’t protected you by making sure dad only hit me”? He looks back at the house – and perhaps into his past as well – and shadows ominously cover his face. “All things considered” he says without any enthusiasm, and for a moment his mask falls away as he gets in the car. As though he’s saying “maybe you turned out okay, but I didn’t”.
And is it just me or does Dean look like he’s been punched in the stomach in the second gif? People seem to think that he is happy and pleased by Sam saying “we were lucky to have dad”, but that just isn’t what his face looks like to me. Before he speaks, he looks… devastated. He doesn’t actually say that he’s glad Sam said that, only that he never thought he would, and his smile doesn’t look excited, only incredulous. Maybe part of him was always glad that Sam fought back against John when he couldn’t, that Sam knew John abused them. Maybe hearing Sam say that John did right by them, no matter how much Dean himself insists that’s true, took the air out of him.
Once we take this scene apart and look at it closely, it only convinces me further that John beat Dean when Sam wasn’t around and Dean protected Sam not only from John, but from the knowledge that he was beaten.
I decided to remake the Dean gifs so that we can get a slightly better look at his face. I think it speaks for itself.
Look closely at Sam in the last gif. Dean gets in the car, but Sam just stands there, like he’s processing Dean’s strange reaction. I think Sam had been expecting a very different reaction from Dean. Up to this point, Dean has always been the one defending John while Sam yelled about their fucked up childhood (going all the way back to the pilot and his anger over being given a gun when he was 9 and afraid of the thing in his closet).
Sam was expecting a positive response from Dean, or at least the usual Dean snark when Sam agrees with his brother. He got none of that. He got this grim, stoic mask instead.
Sam stands there, dumbfounded really. And I think that might be the first time he realizes that Dean’s childhood experiences might’ve been a little different than his own. That maybe it wasn’t John who was responsible for Sam not experiencing a childhood like Max did. That maybe the demons and vampires and werewolves weren’t the only horrors that Dean tried to keep hidden from Sam.
I always have a hard time with early-season Sam’s attitude and behavior toward Dean. He laughs at Dean’s ingenuity and intelligence; he all but sneers at Dean’s defense of John; there’s almost a sense of disgust toward Dean’s attitude, a lack of respect for the things Dean’s done to keep them all together and functioning.
Maybe that’s what makes this sequence so heartbreaking. Dean is hearing in so many words, unequivocally, that Sam really has no clue what Dean’s life has been, what Dean has protected him from. Mr. College Boy is certain he’s got it all figured out, that he sees their father as he truly was. It must feel like Dean’s entire existence is invisible, unimportant. That last line is delivered with such bitterness.
And this is why it doesn’t have to be a criticism of Sam if you still like him in season 1 despite that – Dean worked hard to give Sam that privilege and likes thinking of Sam as his snot nosed little brother which comes with the perks that he can talk to Dean like that and Dean will just take it because it’s Sam being Sam as far as he’s concerned – it might come back to bite him by giving him actual grief in a dark, horrible moment like this one where Sam’s lack of knowledge/information on the horrible dark truths in their lives means he says something that causes Dean immense pain, but 1×05 he let him have the cash and 1×08 Sam was free to sit around outside and not hustle anyone to earn his keep. Season 1 was an all-expenses paid roadtrip for Sam if he wanted to keep it that way because Dean would be happy to let him, while season 2 when he finally snaps and wants to be more like Dean was in season 1 when it comes to committing himself to the job, we finally see him start doing stuff like stealing cars because he needs one etc and I imagine was actually doing his part for earning cash for them now he was fully on board with hunting again and had chosen it as his life.
Anyway, Dean gives him the luxury to be the occasionally bratty Sam of season 1, and Sam growing up with that safety bubble from Dean is at luxury to not know the dark things (I mean… the Christmas episode… what a character study in this… it’s in season 3 but it’s just explaining character dynamics we’ve had all along) while Dean is caught between the contradictory desire to have the family back together and hunting and being a family again in their own weird way, and stuff like this from 1×18:
SAM That’s not what I meant. I meant Michael. He’ll always know there are things out there in the dark – he’ll never be the same, you know? Sometimes I wish that….
DEAN What…?
SAM I wish I could have that kinda innocence.
DEAN If it means anything, sometimes I wish you could too.
it makes me feel like a lot of the sanitised for Sammy stuff is preserving that little bit of extra innocence, so you can get all the way to season 9 and Sam still doesn’t know about Sonny’s, for example, because why bring it up and just drop it in conversation when Dean knows exactly how Sam would get about hearing the story:
SAM You were 16. You made a mistake.
DEAN Yeah. I made the mistake. Look, I know how you think. None of this was Dad’s fault.
so there’s still stuff he holds onto that he wouldn’t want to challenge Sam’s world view just for the sake of upsetting him.
So long way to get there, but when Sam says or does stuff that’s obviously coming from the misinformed place Dean put him in, it usually ends up Sam’s innocence trumps Dean’s annoyance at him being a brat like he was sometimes in season 1, and to me makes it quite understandable where they’re coming from.
Does anybody else see a similarity between his reaction to Sam’s “we would have had Max’s childhood” and Adam’s “why, what did Dad do for your birthday?”
This weekend I combined my love for drawing maps with my love for creepy stuff. Here is the result, a map of America’s cryptozoology, urban legends, hauntings and other creepy stuff. (Sidenote: almost all states have bigfoot.)
My favorite part about 1931 Dracula is that there are armadillos running around Dracula’s castle.
Look at this it’s like they couldn’t find any rats so they just were like “eh close enough no one will notice”. But I noticed. I noticed.
“WE NAILED IT BOYS”
Apparently in the 20s and 30s, armadillos weren’t very commonly known, so moviemakers would use them wherever they needed some creepy, ‘demonic’ animal running around. So there were a lot of armadillos in early filmmaking, and it was often people’s only source of reference for armadillos.
Fast forward twenty years to when the father of the biology professor who told me this is driving out from the east coast to see his son in California. Crossing the southwest at night.
An armadillo runs across the road.
He comes to a screeching halt and the Thing Of Evil, which he never knew was actually a real animal, trots the rest of the way across the road and vanishes into the desert.
kototyph 