Remembering stuff (AM)

I have memories in my brain that seem so improbable I sometimes wonder if they are real. Like once K and I were at the pub for a friend's 21st and this guy we had just met who seemed like a bit of a dick went to the supermarket to get a snack and came back eating a capsicum. Just chomping on a capsicum like it is was an apple. Really?! I mean that guy was just a bit of a dick and I guess he liked eating capsicum. It happened. But really?!

Another time K and I were hanging out on the roof of my old apartment building one night and the moon just appeared to fall out of the sky behind the horizon. We both saw it, we weren't high and we don't know what the eff happened. But it happened.

And once when LB and I were on holiday in Japan, at the end of a day at Ueno zoo we saw a huge bird waddle out of a little house in an enclosure, eat some food and waddle back with the zoo keeper as if they were best buds.

This is a picture I stole off the internet but it totally represents what I saw that day

Despite Tokyo being full of tourists the signs at the zoo were mainly in Japanese with just random ones being translated into English. And because it was right at the end of our trip to Japan and at the end of our day at the zoo I couldn't take any photos because my memory card was full. That zoo has a really amazing array of animals and a fantastic bird collection including puffins and flamingos and vultures. But the enclosures are pretty depressing for the most part and the day was somewhat conflicted. And then right at the end we walked past an enclosure with no idea what was meant to be in there and that's when the zoo keeper emerged with his grey, feathered friend that was about three quarters his height.

The way that the bird and man emerged together and the funny waddle of the bird made him seem so human somehow. Or rather, like an anthropomorphised cartoon bird. Even at the time I remember wondering what the fuck I was watching and if that bird wasn't a guy in a suit. If that bird was for real. For years I actually did kind of question the experience and then one day I found out what that bird was. I don't know if LB somehow knew or I saw a picture or maybe I did a search on birds at Ueno zoo, but one day I just knew that what I'd seen was a shoebill.

Here are some pictures I found on the internet. When I saw them I knew that even the cartoonishness of the bird in my memory was legit.

Guys, doesn't nature just blow your mind?! I mean look at that face! If you have never seen one of these in real life I can not recommend a trip to Tokyo highly enough.