Today is the last day of school, so Steve and I thought it would be a good day to check out the dinosaur exhibit at the zoo, without a lot of kids running around (just the under 5 types that happened to be there). So, off we went to the zoo with Guide Dog Murray to visit the dinosaurs, because we thought Murray would probably enjoy that (okay not really, but we wanted to go and it’s always cute taking pictures of adorable puppies with things).
As we walked down the path to the dinosaur exhibit, there were some peacocks ahead, which was cool until the peacocks caught sight of us and our black, four legged friend named Murray.
And they started running.
Towards us.
AT US.
I’m not sure if I swore in front of all the children, and I’m sure Steve doesn’t remember either because we ran.
I didn’t actually realize until I looked back after we’d started booking it back to the entrance that there were not one, but two peacocks chasing us and squawking at us. Somewhere in there I finally thought to scream which freaked them out a bit and they stopped charging towards us. We kept running until they were out of sight.
Of course, Murray got all excited that we were running and he was just bouncing around as we ran. Silly dog, had zero clue that peacocks wanted to eat him. Which is probably for the better. Look, despite how adorable tall Steve finds my short legs running, I only ever run for legitimate reasons—also I learned how to run in university. #kinwin.
After about 200 metres of running (I don’t know how far it was, I think that was Steve’s guess), I could no longer see the terrifying peacocks. We stopped and slightly more calmly made it back inside the entrance area where we paid, and walked up to the ticket lady that had processed our admission and informed all the zoo staff that a service dog was coming in by radio.
“Hi, so we just got chased by a peacock out there…” I told her “Can we get a refund and we’ll come back one day without the dog?”
“…Oh wow. Uh yeah let me just go talk to my boss.”
“I know, things you never thought you’d hear when you came into work today, right?”
We got our refund after our five minute zoo trip and went to the gift shop.
Murray still got to see some dinosaurs, but they were tinier than anticipated.
And there’s the story of the shortest zoo trip in history, probably.
And the story of that time I got chased by a peacock with a dude who never saw it coming and a puppy who probably thought we were playing. 😉