Riding in Baltimore

I was in Baltimore Maryland last summer taking a class on how to do general maintenance on Halmatro Rescue Tools. They are tools like the jaws of life that you see fire fighters using. I was there because at the time I was a fire fighter and it was to help me go to the South Pole, which regrettably never took place. The most amazing part about the whole thing was the time after the class.

There were about 8 men in the class and there were no women. (Not that that really matters I’m just giving you an idea of the class size). The class was to last for two days so on the first night the eight of us decided to go out on the town. This was as close to the actual Mason/Dixion line that I ever came to at that time. I actually crossed it this summer but never even seen a marker to tell me that I crossed it. I figured such an old town as Baltimore would have a pretty interesting buffet of pubs and local breweries. This may be true but the group I was traveling with wasn’t really interested in good beer. Although, to their credit they were into good desserts. We walked a lot and ended up in the little Italy part of Baltimore and had some Gelatino (whatever that Italian ice cream is called).

After this we walked around and I found a couple of giraffes standing in downtown Baltimore. They didn’t seem comfortable in a town of this size so I slowly approached one of them and calmly reassured him that I meant him no harm. When I got to the point of being able to put my hands on him I anti-calmed him by yelling “Lion!!”. You would have thought this was stupid and mean had you not been there but I used to be a large animal zoo keeper/trainer and I know what I’m doing. You see I’m a person of small stature and I have chicken legs, and, in case you are unaware adult giraffes are quite tall. Therefore, in order for me to mount this giraffe I would need someone to hoist me to the top or get the giraffe to sit. This giraffe did not look to be well trained so sitting was out of the question so I scared it. When a giraffe is scared, and the type of scared that means they will die if they don’t move like lightening, then they will lower their body slightly to increase the amount of power in the next step. So, when I screamed, “Lion!!” the giraffe, being scared for its life, lowered slightly and at this point I jumped aboard.

Once on board it took quite a bit of talking to get him to calm back down, but
back in my early days with the zoo I was known as the large animal whisperer. It was shortened to whatever animal I was currently working with so in this case I would have been called the Giraffe Whisperer. I drove ‘Fred’ back to where my friends were and had them take my picture. I grew attached to the giraffe and affectionately called him Fred.


The sad part of this photo is that the reason of there being a giraffe in downtown Baltimore became all too evident. This is why Fred has the deer-in-the-headlights look. At this moment there was a stampede of people (I assume Baltimoreans although none of them stopped to tell me who they were). Followed behind them was a stampede of other zoo animals. (I have poor sentence structure so I am using the ‘other zoo animals’ to refer to Fred being a zoo animal and I am not saying that Baltimoreans are zoo animals. That just wouldn’t be kind).

This is the last photo that my friend took. I don't know if those are his skivies on those horns or someone else's. Either way it is pretty terrifying. The guy who took the photo was never seen again as the onslaught of animals and people crushed him into microdust. To make sure I didn’t inhale him I held my breath for as long as I could and then pulled my shirt over my nose and used it as a filter. The shirt filtered out the big stuff which I find to be the most damaging parts that can compromise your immune system. Thankfully the guy didn’t use the lanyard on the camera (like I told him to) or I would have lost my camera too. As it was it was tossed from his hands and landed behind a lightpost and free from the danger of the mob.

The national guard come rolling through on tanks and large trucks and I offered my assistance with rounding up the mob and stampede. But since I didn’t dress like a tree they didn’t want me to help. Although, one of the guys behind the one in charge kept clamoring to ride my giraffe. I gave the man in charge a brief history of my dealing with large zoo animals and he let me go to round up the ‘herd’ on my own. You see I can be pretty persuasive when I’m riding an adult giraffe in downtown Baltimore. I really felt like the guy in “The Man from Snowy River”. Although there wasn’t a big hill to travel down.

To make a long story short I was able to round up the rest of the zoo animals and the mayor of Baltimore thanked me for my hard work with bringing calm back to the city of Baltimore. I guess now my friends at the zoo will call me the Baltimore Whisperer. In addition to the National Guard this fella help too. I just called him Gringo. He had a natural persuasion all his own.