When Animals Attack.

The best bit of a visit to the zoo? Naturally, when your other half gets attacked by the animals. In the space of an afternoon, Howie managed to befriend a wallaby, get stalked by an emu and have his beard cleaned by an amorous parrot. Seriously.

The day had already got off to a questionable start, because - for various reasons - by the time we got to the zoo, Howie was already hungry and we were barely talking to each other. Fortunately, Howie got round this by talking to the animals instead. As it turns out, he's quite the Doctor Dolittle. Adelaide Zoo is resplendantly situated like another jewel in the wiggly, wet tiara of river that nobly crowns the city centre. Along with the Oval and the University, you can reach the Zoo by a pleasant cycle-ride along the River Torrens. This we did, and splendid it was too, with the sun on our backs and our bikes still in working order (more on this later).

Once there, once we had emptied the cafeteria (which really is over-priced, as Howie pointed out more than once), we got straight in the queue to see the newly-arrived pandas. I don't think I've queued for such a long time to see two bears before, but although one was asleep, the other was fairly active; as soon as Howie and I got there, he rolled over, pointed his buttocks over the side of a rocky outcrop, and emptied his (extensive, it seems) bowels all over the floor. My, I've never seen so much squishy bamboo in one place.

Charmed by the elusive mystery of the pandas and their defecating ways, we proceeded to tour the zoo in it's entirety, starting off with the children's zoo. There was a rumour going around that one could feed the animals in the children's zoo. but what no-one had told me was that you could get in the wallaby enclosure and practically cuddle them. Needless to say, I milked our time in there for all it was worth, following the very soft-furred wallabies around and vowing to take one home. There were also quillas in there, which I hadn't much of a clue about, but they were awfully sweet as well. And more handbag-sized, incidentally... I assume it was this first encounter with the animals that encouraged Howie's St Francis-like tendancies to flourish: perhaps the animals just got a taste for him, but for the rest of the day, you couldn't get them away from him. Meerkats climbed trees to sniff him out, emus poised their beaks an inch away from his shorts while he obliviously played with his i-phone and - my personal favourite part of the day - when we walked through the Australian rainforest exhibit, he was fawned over by a green parrot. Let me explain.

We'd been all the way around the zoo, seeing lots of things twice because they were very cute, when we came across a mesh door that heralded the entrance to the Australian rainforest exhibit. The only place we hadn't actually been in the zoo, naturally we were keen to go in. The moment we stepped through the door into the little ante-chamber they have to prevent the birds from escaping, I was scared out of my skin by two enormous, mohawked pigeons, who had settled on the roof above me. They then proceeded to try and poo on Howie's head (unfortunately, they missed). Incidentally, it was around now that Howie told me that when he'd gone off to the toilet earlier in the day, he'd stopped at the cafe to sit down. Feeling something on his foot, he looked under the table: one of these mohican pigeons that hang around the bins had mounted his foot and was pecking at it furiously (goodness knows what it was hoping to gain from this). After this story, we really should have guessed what would happen when Howie was let loose in a whole enclosure full of birds. The creatures were generally free-roaming, as they are in these places; lots of beautiful parrots and lovebirds, with some mad-looking lads thrown into the bargain and some little furry things running around. We rounded a corner and were greeted by a big green parrot flying straight towards us and landing on a branch. Out of the foiliage, a mysterious Chinese man laughed and told us this parrot had just been sitting in his shoulder. 'Ha ha!' we both cried in disbelief. So - and this is so predictable - Howie purposefully stood next to the parrot so it might jump onto his shoulder.

Well, the parrot did, of course, and I took a couple of pictures. But then, the parrot started to behave very strangely. Whether this parrot was merely amorous, we know not, but it took rather an inspired fancy to Howie's stubble, so much so that it proceeded to 'groom' him with its beak, occasionally making a cackling noise. It also put it's beak into Howie's mouth. Nice. But the worst thing was - Howie just couldn't shake the little fellow off. No matter what we tried, we couldn't get rid of this blessed parrot: the Chinese bloke had done a bunk and we were completely alone with an ardent bird and little or no bird expertise. We tried to shake him off, coax him off, literally lift him off... But the bird was having none of it. It kept making mad noises and sliding along Howie's arms and shoulders like it was a perch. It was slightly worrying still, when he started shoving his beak into Howie's hair and flapping about. To be frank, I was a little scared (I mean, what if the other parrots started to copy him?) and although Howie thought it was hilarious, for a moment there we thought we might be taking the little fellow home with us. After a fashion (and I mean literally ten minutes of panic) we managed to get rid of the bird - we both ran to the door and shut ourselves out of the parrot's reach, only to be confronted by a bigger parrot, that was jet black, but flashed with red wings. Personally, I was having visions of what would happen if this bird took to Howie too (he was considerably bigger than the green lad) so made certain I got out of there as quickly as possible. Howie, of course, tried to coax this massive bird as near to him as possible, which I thought was very silly.

Anyway, we made it out of the zoo alive, and thought it the end of our day's trauma. Ha. I tried to cycle up a very modest hill and suddenly -SNAP! - the chain on my bike broke and whipped me round the legs. So today, Howie has gone into the city to try and get it fixed (sigh) while I am sans-transport and still laughing at Howie's exploits with the parrot yesterday.

Preperations will soon be underway as we embark on our festive trip to the Land of the Long White Cloud (that's New Zealand, by the way), where hopefully we shall again have some amusing encounters with the local wildlife. For now, I part with this nugget of wisdom: if a random Chinese man wants to put a parrot on you, just say no. They go straight for the jugular.