Ranga Day? Again ? Hooray!

Last year, for the duration of the October holidays, Adelaide Zoo invited redheads - natural and artificial too - to a free visit to the Zoo. It was a sort of humorous harmless gimmick apropos the fact that the Zoo had had its three Orangutans for one year, but it was also a very shrewd marketing ploy. I took them up on the offer, and two non-rangas came with me; it was plain as we walked around that this was the usual sort of arrangement, one redhead plus some non-redheads too, and the Zoo did very well out of the whole Ranga initiative.

For us redheads, it was great fun. So many redheads, of all shades and ages and genders, and all of us grinning at each other like the happy orangs we were. It felt fine, the first time ever that we were in big enough proportion that we felt (abnormally) normal.

The original idea had also involved the notion of photographing all the redheads, which would have made a wonderful display had it eventuated. Unfortunately one man injected such a sour and threatening note that the photographic initiative was called off, and the whole program was nearly cancelled. I found out the exact details from the ticket-selling gatewoman whom the man had threatened: a black-haired man, with a black-haired little girl, came up to her and said aggressively "This is my red-haired daughter! - And I'm red-haired too!" and demanded to get in free. The woman held her ground, and the man got really nasty. It made bad press, some of which made it seem that redheads objected to the Zoo's offer, which is nonsense. But if the black-haired man felt so strongly preferenced-against, he could have dyed his and her hair reddish,
that was already clear in the terms of the offer, if you weren't natural you could show solidarity and commitment by using dye, henna or whatever. This creep was just a bully, but he failed to intimidate the staunch ticket-woman.

Anyway the Zoo persevered until the end of the holidays, and it was a great success except for that one glitch. So for about 16 days the redheads kept coming, I only went one day of course but if you multiply the number of redheads that were there on that day by 16 or so, then the answer's a lot! Thousands! So we won, and so did the Zoo.

Well today I rang the Zoo to see if they intend to repeat the offer. They haven't made a hard decision yet, but they would like to do it again at least for one day. Good on 'em. If they only do it for one day it will be amazing, thousands of redheads will come all on the same day and suck all their friends with them, the Zoo will have a super-record crowd! I'd love them to do that.

I'm going to join Friends of the Zoo. They're ecologically right-headed and I like them.