Lions and Tigers and Orangutans, OHIO!

So I was listening to Bob and Tom a few weeks ago. 

Okay, I guess I should set that up for the Rhode Islanders.  Bob and Tom is a radio station that originated in central Indiana and became so popular that they are now nationwide. 

But they’re not in Rhode Island.  I’ve checked.  They play such classics as "Stairway to Heaven," "In the Midnight Hour," and "99 Dead Baboons."  Nope, you read that correctly.  Nope, it’s not a typo.

Everything is a joke to them.  Nothing is off-limits.  As an example, when the space shuttle fell out of the sky they offered a promotion: print out a certificate that could be found on their website.  Carry it around in your back pocket.  If you were killed by the falling space shuttle and had that certificate they would pay for your coffin: a coffin straight from Batesville, Indiana, to make the deal even sweeter.

Batesville is known for their coffins in case you didn’t know.  I didn’t know that either until my parents decided to spend a weekend at a bed and breakfast down there and people kept asking if they were going to pick out their coffins while they were gone. 

So anyways, I was in Indiana this past week, and I was listening to Bob and Tom.  It must have been a slow news day, because they only thing they discussed the entire morning was the escape of animals from a man’s house in Zanesville, Ohio.  Ohio is Indiana’s neighbor, so we pretend to care about what happens to those Buckeyes. 

Lions and tigers and wolves and orangutans running around the town?  That’s pretty interesting, so we didn’t have to pretend too much that day. 

Can you imagine turning on the news while you’re helping your kids get ready for school only to hear the following announcement?

 “School is canceled today due to the recent escape of exotic animals.”

It’s like finding a hippo, a giraffe, a lion and a zebra running around Grand Central Station as they try to escape to Africa only to end up in Madagascar.

I had school canceled or delayed because of snow, ice, fog, flooding, a boiler explosion, but never exotic animals.

To make the story even more interesting, the day before this story broke I heard about a cow on the Jamestown Bridge.  A cow.  On the bridge.  How does that happen? 

So I’m running around Indiana talking about this crazy cow and how strange Rhode Island is, only to discover the next day that the Midwest is even more weird. 

Granted, in the Midwest it’s crazy strange to have a cow loose on a bridge that’s longer than a footbridge over a small river.  I have no concept of what that would look that and I’ve driven over the bridge frequently.

Next time someone asks me if there are any similarities between Rhode Island and the Midwest my response will be the following: “Yes!  Both have random animals running loose in random places.”  That’s a common response right?