The Santa Ana Zoo has added a new addition to the family: "columnist horribilis."
"For three days, I'll be just another member of its vaunted primate section, a humanlike spectacle for you to gawk at (Look, honey, his hands look almost human!) and tease with your ice cream bars and cotton candy," said Orange County Register columnist Frank Mickadeit.
The fully caged writer will be on display Tuesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and at a special twilight viewing on Wednesday until 8 p.m.
And as for why Mickadeit would sign up for captivity at the zoo? Because after a particularly hard week, while on assignment at the zoo, a primate caught his attention:
There was this old grey-haired gent inside, hanging from a branch by one long arm and using his free hand to pull leaves from a branch he was holding with one foot, and then popping said leaves into his mouth.
I sighed I asked aloud: "How can I get a job like that?"
So now, Mickadeit has that job.
"So far, nobody has thrown anything at me, and I haven't had to throw anything at them," he wrote on his Facebook wall on Tuesday.
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If you cannot make it to the zoo for "Columnist in a Cage: columnist horribilis in His Natural Environment," Mickadeit is live 24 hours a day on the newspaper's Cage Cam.
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