La Brea Tar Pits

A week or two ago a friend (we were in the same ward at BYU) and her son accompanied Oskar and I to the La Brea Tar Pits.

Tons of fossils have been excavated from the tar pits that show the kinds of animals that were living in Los Angeles up to 11,000 years ago.  The picture below is of a mammoth!  I love mammoths and have decided that it is now my spirit guide instead of an orangutan.

We watched a movie that showed the death trap that is a tar pit.  One animal is sucked into the tar and gets trapped and then another animal thinking it will prey on the first one tries to attack it but in the process also gets sucked into the tar and is trapped and then another animal sees the two in the tar and thinks it will have a nice treat but also gets sucked into the tar and then they all die.  The picture below describes the process of getting stuck and dying in the tar.  What you can't see in the picture is the baby mammoth on land watching her mother get pulled down by the sticky tar.  It's pretty brutal.

Oskar was not scared in the slightest of these animatronics even though taxidermy is my number one fear.

 At this station you pull the thing out of the tar just to see how difficult and sticky it was.  And there was a sign that said to not climb on the glass.  Oops.

One of the workers was walking around with a saber-tooth tiger head.  Oskar gave it a kiss.

 A sabter-tooth tiger attacking a ground sloth.  Again, Oskar was not phased in the slightest.  What a guy.

This was the point in our adventure when I was trying to pick up Oskar to take him outside and he ran around and hid from me.

And this was the end.  We can only go out outings for so long before we all have had enough.