I went to HS with a bunch of animals!

This post is inspired by my friend Lyda who posted a bunch of HS pictures on facebook. My title is also the title of her photo album.

No. Really. I attended the North Hollywood High School Biological Sciences/Animal Studies Zoo Magnet. A mouthful right? Apparently they've changed the name to just "Zoo Magnet". Know why it's called that? That's right, it resides in the parking lot of the LA Zoo. Like most people, I have fond and not-so-fond memories of high school. But unlike others, a lot of mine include the animals.

My favorite memory is from a class I took on animal behavior. We actually spent an entire semester studying one animal. We were divided up into groups and each group chose an animal to observe. My group chose the siamang monkeys. In order to get as much class time as possible in one day, our classes were actually double as long, and only met 3 days a week. So Monday, we had all classes. Then we had some of our classes only Tues/Thurs and the other Wed/Fri (or something like that. It may have been Friday we had all classes, I don't remember all the details. This is what happens when you have kids, your memory goes...what was I talking about? Oh ya, siamangs). This gave us time to walk up to the zoo, study, and get back. So we had a good 2 hours we would sit and observe these monkeys and their behavior. We got to know them quite well. So well in fact that the guys in our group figured out how to imitate their distinctive territorial call. It sounds similar to a really LOUD whoop that starts in their throat and comes out like a long "Boo!"

So anyway, on our appointed days we'd head up to the zoo with our writing pads, observe for a while, and when we were getting bored, the guys would start up their calls. You should have seen those monkeys get all riled up! They'd start swinging around, screaming at the top of their lungs, convinced there was another monkey trying to invade their territory! We thought it was hilarious!

Ahhhhhh, the memories :)

By the way, the picture posted at the top is my graduating class of 1996. I am in the bottom row, third from the right. I apparently was not happy to be taking this picture!