Lympne Wildlife Park

It's gorgeous weather in London, so James and I decided to take the train out to Ashford in Kent to see the Aspinal Wildlife Park in Lympne.  It's 130 acres of exotic animals with a view of the English Channel.  Not quite as weird as seeing the rhinos in a foot of snow in the Zurich zoo, but a bit out of the ordinary.  We took the bus from Ashford and wound our way through quaint country villages, pastures with grazing sheep and adorable lambs and the occasional manor house.  Once in the park, we ambled past lions, meerkats, reptiles, and a safari ride to see the ostrich and giraffes.  But our real interest was the great apes.  We got to the first Gorilla house in the late afternoon. The two young gorillas were playing on a slide.  They were incredibly smart, running up it and sitting on a handfull of straw to make sliding down even faster.  They chased each other and pushed and shoved just like any pre-school kids.  The Silverback finally made his appearance, clearly unhappy with the onlookers.  He occasionally darted toward the windows and pounded on them, frightening the human kids.  The gorilla kids were unperturbed.  Seems like they are used to it.  After some time observing, we went over to the other gorilla habitat.  It was just the two of us watching gorillas for a while until a very loud family wandered over.  The young girls were yelling at the gorillas, trying to get them to do something gorilla like and commenting on their gorilla odors. 

James did the unthinkable.  He shushed them.

The mother would have none of this.  "You don't tell my children to be quiet," she hissed.  James pointed to the "don't annoy the gorilla" signs and suggested that yelling was indeed annoying.  "Oh, that's not yelling, believe me," the mother retorted.  I ventured that she was probably right about that.  It did seem like an awfully loud family that was doing a great job keeping the decibels down to rock concert levels.  The family scooted toward the Mandrills with a bit of the, "I never....what a wanker!"  And for a few minutes we continued to hear blablabla wanker blablabla.

We eventually parted ways completely.  James told me that he had finally had a UK person call him a wanker.  It seemed a moment of pride for him.