Boo At the Zoo

Okay, so this is something a little different. I've been working at the Birmingham Zoo for about four and a half years now as a seasonal employee - basically, since I've been living in Tuscaloosa, I work summers, Spring Break, and the weekends during October. During these weekends in October, the zoo holds "Boo At the Zoo," and it's always more or less the same thing. This year, though, I noticed for the first time how Sci-Fi-esque the whole event is. One of our main attractions (and definitely the only one that is even remotely scary) is the Alien Reptile Experience or something like that. It's basically the Reptile House turned into a haunted house-type attraction based around this 'plot' that alien/reptile things have landed on Earth and are experimenting on humans in the building. In addition to that, the train ride this year was turned into a sort of Jurassic Park knock-off. There are life-like (though much smaller, of course) dinosaurs set up all along the track and I believe their little story is similar to that of the Speilberg movies, where the dinosaurs were genetically engineered by present-day scientists.
The most in-your-face sci-fi aspect of the event, though, is the presence of tons of people payed to walk around in Star Wars attire. It's pretty funny when you're at work and suddenly a group of storm troopers walks by you, stopping only to take pictures with groups of little kids dressed as Buzz Lightyear and Spiderman. Here are some pictures of the Star Wars characters:






































It's also fun just to see how many of the kids dress up in a sci-fi related costume. There were lots of kids in Star Wars related costumes, as well as tons of other movies and tv shows with sci-fi leanings.