Wanted: Man to Resolve Conflict Between Bickering Anacondas

Yesterday, I went with the senior class to Six Flags Over Marine World up in Vallejo, near Oakland. Every year, the seniors go there. Every year, I go with them. It's a lot of fun bonding with the kids.

To me, Six Flags Over Marine World is like a cross between a zoo/auqarium and an amusement park. But for me, it's a bit like a camera-phone. It's not that great of a camera and not that great of a phone. Same thing. It's not that great of an amusement park and not that great of a zoo.

Plus, I only counted four flags. So that's a rip off.

But I did learn some things about myself. I learned that I don't like roller coasters too much anymore. They give me a headache. And I kept wanting to turn around and tell the masses of young people, "Would you mind not screaming so loud?"

My favorite parts were when I got to sit in the shade and watch the animal shows.

When did I turn into my grandfather?

The Killer Whale show was astounding, mostly because I got to sit next to Rob Iverson, my pal, fellow teacher and marine biologist. The whale was 4,000 pounds and 16 feet long. Rob said that the largest Great White shark on record is somewhere around 19-feet long, which is astounding because this whale was just ginormous. When it swam around, the pool, which was 68 feet wide and 30 feet deep, swished around the way that water moves in a bathtub when a toddler tries to make waves. I mean, it was sloshing around like coffee in a mug. So much power.

The best part was at the end when the whale breached entirely out of the water, and did a one-and-a-half forward flip. It was magnificent. The trainers said that all the tricks were variations of naturally occurring behavior, but I'm pretty sure in the wild, Orcas don't jump 25 feet in the air to hit red balls with their snouts. And rarely do they time it perfectly to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy."

Everyone knows Orcas like Prince's later stuff. Alphabet Street. New Power Generation. Etc.

The other super cool part of the day was the Tiger exhibit. There were Siberian Tigers and Bengal Tigers. The Bengal Tiger was about 500 pounds and was white and black. It was pretty darn big. But we were told the smaller two Siberian Tiger cubs - who were 10 months old, would grow to be about 750 pounds, which is just gigantic. There were two men in the "natural habitat" with the tigers. I asked them if they were in danger. They said, "Potentially."

Hmm.

There was this one part that was kind of weird. There was a sign near the cage that read, "May get wet or sprayed" and I thought that was curious. There was a pool for the Tigers to lounge by, but I thought that the likelihood of getting wet from the pool was pretty rare. I mean, unless one of the Tigers did a cannonball, or something. But then I saw one of the tigers start scratching a tree, and then turned, faced his haunches toward the tree and let loose what appeared to be a large blast of water behind him.

It was - apparently - not water. This is what they were referring to with the "spraying" verbiage. And it's literally spraying. Like a good blast from a garden hose with a nozzle. We're talking that much urine.

I think they should change the sign. "May get pissed on by a Tiger. Stand back."

That's a more helpful sign. The trainer said that every week, someone gets "sprayed." He said it doesn't smell, though.

"It's the color and consistency of movie popcorn butter," he said.

"But not the taste," the other trainer said, laughing.

I didn't want to know how he arrived at that conclusion.

"Hey, Jimmy, you want some popcorn? It's got Tiger Urine on it!"

There was a pretty cool part, though. This one Siberian tiger cub started "stalking" the older white Bengal tiger. It would hide behind logs and when the white tiger would look over, it would duck really low, but you could see its tail sticking out. So funny. Then it got closer, jumped on top of the log and then onto the white Bengal tiger. Apparently, Tigers don't hunt by instinct, but learn by watching tapes of Jimmy "Superfly" Snooka.

The white tiger then just batted this cub and it went flying. So the cub came back and appeared to attempt to eat the white Tiger's huge paw.

"Hey, Odin! Stop that!" the trainer yelled. He went over to the cub and pulled him away from the white Bengal tiger who was now agitated a bit.

It was then that I realized that this guy's job was pretty much to stand in a locked, sealed cage and break up fights between fully-grown tigers.

And you thought your job was tough.