Saturday, July 11, 2009

Animals

The bear trainers invited us to come down and meet the grizzlies - Bart and Honey Bump. I met Bart while working on Evan, but I'm not going to pass up the chance to see him again. Not to mention his sister Honey Bump! Not that we can pet them or anything but we can get within 10 feet of them - plenty close.

Crystal the capuchin (not white-faced) has been back to the office a couple of times. I haven't gotten to have her sit on my shoulder yet - all I've done is shake her hand, played "tilt your head" with her, and gotten a high five - but everybody seems to think she's really taken with me. When the guys were walking her out she kept staring at me. I didn't think there was anything going on but other people mentioned it so maybe... Next time I hope to get a pic.

I think all of the animals have made it into town by now so I'm also looking forward to meeting the elephant and the wolf (hybrid, I think). And the giraffe although I'm not sure you can really meet a giraffe...

Thursday, July 02, 2009

The Monkey

The monkey that's going to be in the movie was brought into the office today. The director's dog Spuz took one look at it and peed - then barked. When we heard the monkey was there, I debated going to the other side of the office to see it because it meant taking Sofie with me and I didn't know how she'd react. But I went anyway and waited to see what would happen.

I'm not sure yet what kind of monkey it was - maybe a capuchin but it wasn't the typical white-face - I'll have to ask. Anyway, Sofie didn't notice it at first. It was sitting on my assistant's shoulder eating some chocolate. It wasn't until it climbed onto Mimi's shoulder that Sofie realized there was something new in the office. She stared at it and then walked over to Mimi and started to stand up (not jump, just stand) but I told her to stop and had her sit. Then she just stared as if she couldn't believe her eyes.

The monkey was familiar with dogs, but having a strange one staring made it a bit nervous and it started making noise, which made Sofie's ears perk up. Luckily, though, Sofie never did anything aggressive towards it in the slightest. She was just super-curious and would have loved to smell this new thing. I don't know what would have happened if the monkey had started moving around - that might have been too much for her.

The rest of the time Sofie just wandered around with this look on her face of "What is that? I must try to get closer and get a good sniff."

Sofie's a good girl - much better behaved and trained then I ever thought.