About 20 of us – bloggers and family members – met at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. for the third annual YearlyCarnacki. (The first year we met in Harpers Ferry, last year in Baltimore. Next year might be in Philadelphia, although there’s the danger of monsters.
YearlyCarnacki got off to a pleasant start. The weather was beautiful though hot. As usual, it was like herding cats to get people together in the same place, but nevertheless we were walking together to see the lions and tigers when I noticed a commotion behind us.
I followed the gaze of the people. President George W. Bush had picked that day of all days to go to the zoo.
Nuts, I thought.
I was there with my 6-year-old Carnacki Girl and didn’t want to risk yet another confrontation with the White House administration with her with me.
I decided the best reaction for me was to pretend as if he wasn’t even there, like he was an inconsequential nothing.
“Hey, there’s Bush,” said jsmdlawyer. “I’m gonna moon him.”
His wife grabbed him in an embrace and told him not in front of the children. I looked over and jsmdlawyer’s son Wolf Boy was pulling up his pants. He had already mooned the president.
We walked over to the tiger pen and then to the lion pen when it happened.
The President of the United States had fallen into the pen with the lions.
I went into full-blown crisis mode. This was an emergency. “Quick,” I told my daughter. “Run over there and get daddy some popcorn.”
Emergency averted, I waited for her return and the other bloggers from Daily Kos and Booman Tribune lined up next to me to watch.
Then the thought hit me. Nuts, I thought. If the lion eats President Bush, that means my nemesis Dick Cheney would become even more Presidenter. He’d be the Presidentist!
“Somebody ought to…” I managed to get out of “Somebody ought to do something” when I felt hands grip me tightly from both sides and hurl me over the wall and into the lion’s den. As I fell I saw that DCDemocrat, BooMan, kredwyn and JanetTinMD had thrown me in while Brother Feldspar and JEB took pictures.
Nuts, I thought. Once again I recalled too late the risk of hanging out with quicker thinking people.
I splashed across the lagoon to do what I could to protect President Bush, a man I despised.
As I looked into the lion’s eyes, my life flashed across my life: growing up in Alabama; working as a seamstress; refusing to give up my bus seat to James Blake; going to jail…when it hit me. I was about to die and the wrong life was flashing before me.
Nuts, I said.
President Bush ran shrieking from the lion. He sprang into a tree with a surprising nimbleness, climbed the trunk, raced across a branch and jumped into the arms of a man with a yellow hat.
It wasn’t the President of the United States. It was a monkey.
“Come along, George,” the man said, and then I wasn’t so sure.
A zoo keeper lowered a ladder into the pen. The lion yawned and looked lazily at me. I climbed out and CabinGirl handed me a towel.
“So was that the president?” I asked the zoo keeper.
She shook her head no.
“How embarrassing,” I said.
“It happens here all the time,” she said.