Animal attraction

I rode a dolphin, fed a crocodile and pissed off a tiger.

And, no, none of those were euphemisms.

When my wife discovered that both my four-year-old princess daughter and one-year-old 300-pound baby boy were under the impression that all animals were either stuffed, mechanical or spoke in falsetto, she ordered that the family go out of town to commune with wildlife.

“But aren’t ipis wildlife as well, my love?” I argued while she had yaya scrape off the fungus that had grown on my back. “What did I marry, a man or a sloth?” she said while she had me fumigated. “It would be good to expose our family to nature.” She reminded me lovingly by way of memo. “Just make sure not to expose yourself back.”

Once my wife secured a temporary restraining order to prevent me from logging on to Facebook and Twitter and Candy Crush over the weekend and paid a quick visit to the DENR to make sure that I was not classified as an environmental hazard, she piled one baby damulag, two kids, four yayas and 17 maletas into the car as we zipped off to our first animal encounter at Ocean Adventure in Subic.

“I’m so excited for this trip! I can’t wait to show our kids how much of a man their daddy is!” my wife proclaimed as she helped me squeeze into my adult diapers. “Especially when he swims with the dolphins!”

“Sweetheart, can’t our kids just love me for being a sloth?”

Normally, I have no qualms about interacting with sea life, especially if that sea life is on a television screen. If I have to swim beside sea life, I would prefer that that sea life is small enough to fit onto a dinner plate. But just the thought of swimming beside a creature with fins that is not only as tall as you but also has three times the muscle mass is enough to make you pee involuntarily.

Mind you, I wouldn’t be this reluctant if the interaction was with a land-based animal. Because if an animal hissed or growled or spat at me, I could always run away as far as my chicken legs can take me. However, I find it much more difficult to run away from an animal while you are underwater. Moreover, there is the possibility that you might involuntarily drink your own pee.

You must be wondering, my three female readers, why a grown man with a yaya is still afraid of frolicking with dolphins? Has he ever heard of people being mauled by dolphin gangs? Hasn’t he ever hugged an adorable dolphin stuffed toy once in his life? Hasn’t he seen Flipper: The Movie (this US pop cultural reference might only be accessible to those with wrinkles forming in the appropriate places)?

Well, you probably haven’t heard of the darker side of dolphins, the side that you only see in R-rated documentaries, pay-per-view websites and tsismis shows. First of all, I have read that dolphins like to, ubo ubo, fiddle with themselves (and that they are able to do so without the benefit of opposable thumbs). Secondly, did you know that, aside from human beings, dolphins have sex for reasons outside of reproduction (How exactly did they ask the dolphin what was the reason it was having sex? Did they have a questionnaire?). Lastly, I found out that dolphins can be (God forbid) promiscuous little devils as well! My goodness, I’m not sure if this trip should have been one of interaction, but rather of evangelization. I just pray that the dolphin I am interacting with does not confirm any of these behaviors during my visit or else it will have to answer to my wife.  Or to my parish priest.

However, like marriage and castration and euthanasia, it’s good to try everything once in your life. After my wife shot me with tranquilizer darts and fitted me with a pair of water-resistant diapers, I daintily submerged into dolphin-infested waters.

“Sir, are you sure you want to swim with the dolphins?” the dolphin handler asked as he strapped on my life jacket. “Or do you want to swim with the sharks?”

“What’s the difference?” I replied.

“You will enjoy swimming with the dolphins. We will enjoy watching you swimming with the sharks.”

“Do you have a shark encounter?” I retorted while testing the limits of my water-resistant diapers.

“No, sir. But for you, we can make an exception.”

(He was joking, of course. But I still needed to change my diapers.)

When I was waist deep in the water, I squealed as silently as I could as a bottlenose dolphin brushed up against me. I thought the dolphin’s skin would be rough to the touch, but it felt smoother than a newly scrubbed foot. To get to know my dolphin a little better, the handler asked me to “pet” it.

“Don’t you think we should have a couple of drinks with the dolphin first?” I said. The handler directed my hand to its head. As I patted it gently, the dolphin shook and squealed. I must be a pretty good petter, I thought to myself.

Then the handler asked me to mount the dolphin. “In front of my family!?” I protested. After a long-winded explanation that required some illustrations, the handler explained that I needed to hold on tightly to his dorsal fin so that I could ride it to the floating platform where the interaction would take place.

“Am I riding him bareback?” I asked.

“Do you have a problem with that, sir?”

Open wide: Feeding a dressed chicken to a ravenous tiger with your bare hands: the ultimate adventure.

“The last time I rode bareback was on a horse, and it gave me an impromptu prostate massage. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. ”

The trainer smiled slyly, checked my grip on the dorsal fin, and blew his whistle. Suddenly, like a car on EDSA escaping the MMDA on its coding day, the dolphin torpedoed through the water. As my thighs squeezed tightly against the dolphin’s side, it felt as if it was made of purse muscle. I imagine you too would be this muscular if you had to fiddle yourself without opposable thumbs.

Once the dolphin had deposited both of us on the platform and my prostate had stopped jiggling, the handler asked the dolphin to perform a few tricks that showed me not only how smart it was, but how landi it was as well. The dolphin let me rub its belly, hugged me with its fins, spun me around the water while I held on tightly to its flippers, did some differential calculus, swam backwards while upright on the water, then finally planted a wet kiss on my cheek. It even tried to get my cell phone before the interaction ended (I said that it could just like my fan page on Facebook). 

After my wife and the dolphin had a brief but heated exchange of words and echo-locational squeaks, we left the lagoon and dropped by a jungle survival skills presentation by an Aeta tribesman. With just the use of a bolo, bamboo sticks and laway, the tribesman showed us how to cook rice and sinigang na karne, how to shape cutlery, how to craft fashion accessories, how to build a fire and how to create weapons of mass destruction. These survival skills will come in very handy for me in the event that I am marooned on a tropical island, there is a zombie apocalypse or my yaya takes her day off. 

When the presentation was over, I asked the tribesman if I could try on his G-string for purely aesthetic purposes. But once I had donned it, several park visitors complained that they went temporarily blind when the sun bounced off my pasty white complexion. Meanwhile, my yaya thought it was time for me to get another Brazilian wax. I had to cover myself and my pink parts hastily as the park fielded complaints from the CBCP, the MTRCB and various right wing groups for offenses to good taste, good nature, and good grief.

When we had finally lost the trail of the CBCP in the forest, my wife led us to our next animal encounter at Zoobic Safari. Zoobic was like going on the Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise without the mechanical animals but with all the accompanying merchandise. Our first stop was in the animal observation area and petting zoo (at this point, I had already become an expert at petting). There were ostriches and caribous and monkeys and miniature horses and ducks and bearcats and guinea pigs and ferrets and other animals living together in harmony. (“But why aren’t they singing, Daddy?” my Disney-fed princess asked.)

After I petted so many animals that I was worried I might face arrest, there were a few animals that piqued my pink parts, este, interest. There was the Philippine spotted deer that I spotted eating and peeing at the same time (this is a skill that my one-year old son has mastered as well). There was the eternally leaf-munching camel who I was told could drink 100 liters of water in one sitting. (Can you just imagine how long it takes for that camel to pee?) And finally, there was the Malay Civet cat. Did you know that alamid coffee, one of the priciest coffees in the world, comes from the beans of coffee berries that have been fermented in the bowels of the civet cat? It supposedly tastes smoother and less acidic than other coffees. I don’t know about you, but my alamid coffee tasted rather nutty and bitter. But I suppose I should have cleaned the coffee beans before I tried them out.

After I drank some Zonrox to wash away the taste of the coffee, I held my yaya’s hand as we bravely entered the crocodile farm. In the farm, the only thing that separated us from a pit of 200 Palawan freshwater crocodiles was a grated steel walkway and the firm grip of my testicles on the rails. I recognized some of those crocodiles, some of whom had even issued me traffic citations on EDSA. To prove to my kids just how much of a man that my wife claimed I was, I purchased a dressed chicken (which was dressed in its birthday suit), dangled it from a string attached to a makeshift fishing pole, and waited until a ravenous crocodile tore it away from the line. Now this was a truly terrifying sight. Can you just imagine how much bacteria there is on an uncooked piece of chicken?

But the Crocodile Farm was merely prelude to the ultimate animal encounter: the tiger safari. My chicken legs, whether dressed or not, would probably be as fast as cars on EDSA during the rainy season if ever the tiger ran after me. 

Thankfully enough, we rode inside a modified safari jeep (fashionably camouflaged in tiger stripes) in an enclosure where 500-pound, 11-foot-long cats with five-inch long claws and 17-inch long canines that could rend human flesh into sashimi were pouncing on top of the vehicles (although their growls had the ability to cause high-pitched squealing among grown men. Or so I’m told).  

My wife was slightly disappointed that I would not be able to prove to our children how much of man I was by running alongside the jeep instead of riding inside it. So to make up for it, she asked me to hand-feed the tigers with a birthday suit chicken through a little peekaboo slot in the iron grills of the window. (Incidentally, I learned that you can still type out a column even if you just have two thirds of your fingers left.)

But despite being inside the safari jeep, I was still able to experience the ultimate animal encounter.

I felt a light tinkle that sprayed my face as it came through the grills when the tiger pounced on top of our jeep to devour a chicken. The tinkle smelled a little bit funny, and it was not the funny that would make you laugh.

“What’s that smell?” I wondered aloud.

“Sir, I think it’s tiger pee.”

“Tiger pee!? Why couldn’t the tiger make peepee in the comfort room!? Is there any more Zonrox left so I can wash this off?”

“Sir, the stench of tiger pee stays on your skin for a few days.”

“Wha-aat!? Even if yaya scrubs hard enough!? How exactly did I get pissed on by a tiger?” I asked the handler.

“You were just caught in the line of fire,” he answered. “A tiger’s pee comes out almost like a spray and can reach a distance of six feet.”

“I think I may have tiger DNA in some of my body parts.”

I lack the descriptive prowess to articulate the stench of tiger pee. When I later did a bit of research, I found someone had described it as a “savory smell, like yeast and salt and an added mix of strong herbs simmering in rotten meat broth.” As I read her description, the memory of the stench alone made me want to regurgitate every meal that I had eaten for the past several years. 

Sigh. Apparently, the only upside to smelling like tiger pee is that it contains pheromones that attract females. So, for the No Girlfriends Since Birth (NGSB) out there: if a male tiger pisses all over you, you might not be able to attract female humans (not that you were able to attract them before you got pissed on), but you’ll certainly have your share of female cats purring all over your pink parts (I’m sure they need all the help they can get.)

Hay naku, lesson learned: Never piss off a tiger. But more importantly, never get pissed on by a tiger. After these animal encounters, my wife now thinks I’m an animal too. And she will continue to think that until I am able to control the spray of my pee in the toilet bowl.

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For comments, suggestions or lessons in petting, please email ledesma.rj@gmail.com or visit www.rjledesma.net. Follow @rjled on Twitter!

Visit www.oceanadventure.com.ph and www.zoobic.com.ph.