The La Brea Tad Poles

I've lived in L.A. for about 15 years now; Stacy has lived out here pretty much all her life.  In all this time neither of us had ever been to the La Brea Tar Pits.  Somewhat amazed at this realization, we figured it was high time to see the sludge up close and personal.  A beautiful, crisp sunny November day -- what could be more romantic that taking my Sweetie for a nice little stroll among bubbling pools of hydrogen sulfide-belching asphalt?  I had the day off, and L and N were both out of school too, so we piled into the minivan, hit the Harbor Freeway to the Santa Monica Freeway, burning up enough of yet another form of crude oil distillate to get to the westside.  We stopped off of Fairfax for lunch at the Farmers' Market, people-watching the fashionistas just long enough for Stacy to sink into a funk about how unstylish and untrendy she imagines she's become.  I attempted a couple of quick comments about how pretty I thought she was, but otherwise wisely held my tongue.  There really is no safe response for a male in such a situation.

L being mauled by a giant sloth.

Around 2:00 we got to Hancock Park, home of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as the bubbling puddles of petrochemical festerings.  We spent our first few minutes there walking around the park and gardens.  There were lots of randomly scattered statues of Ice Age mammals begging to be assaulted.  If the flesh and blood versions were no better than the bronze at fending off attacks by small, hairless, upright primates, it really is no wonder they all went the way of the VHS machine.

Wolfgang.

The George C. Page Museum, within Hancock Park, is wonderfully child-friendly, housing all kinds of creepy fossil skeletons extracted from the tar, along with lots of cool hands on exhibits.  One we especially liked involved several large plungers submerged in a vat of viscous asphalt.  You were invited to pull the plunger up out of the thick, clinging muck and discover just how immobile you would be up to your knees in an asphalt pool.  We saw a wall that showed row after row of fossilized Dire wolf skulls, each of which had been pulled from the pits (my picture shows only about a quarter of the ones on display), some reconstructed sloths in all their inactivity, and a number of mammoths that were, well, mammoth.  We also got to watch a short little movie where a snarky narrator rebuked us for calling  periodontally enhanced felines "saber-tooths tigers."  "They're saber-tooth cats!" he scolded.  Too bad he wasn't eaten by one.

L and N, unaware that the saber-tooth stalking them from
behind seems to be desperately in need of a good meal.

After the museum we went back outside to seek out the main attraction - the pits themselves.  N was absolutely fascinated and grabbed the map, insisting on leading us around to the various sites.  For some reason he couldn't quite get his arms around the term "tar pits."  Half the time he was directing us to the La Brea Tide Pools.  Then it was the La Brea Tad Poles.  Regardless, at any little spot of innocent mud in the grass he would shrink back, deadly afraid of joining the George C. Page collection.  I told him that he didn't have to worry; that I'd smeared the bottom of his shoes with canola oil before we left, but that didn't seem to comfort him.  I think he was worried about becoming extinct.

An unfortunately common sight:  A life and death struggle played
out in front of the thoroughly unconcerned traffic of Wilshire Blvd.

L was able to determine incontrovertibly that it was
the Daddy Mammoth that got stuck in the tar.
Don't know how she did it.  There were no anatomical
indicators that I could discern...

A hunt-frenzied L trying to chase me
into a pit so she can score her kill.

One of the pits, No. 91, is an active excavation site and responsible for hundreds and hundreds of bones recovered.  No one was actually working when we swung by, but you could see some of the skeletons marked that they were currently extracting.  (Including a giant sloth.)

By the end of the afternoon Stacy was feeling a little "tarred,"  (Ha ha!  Get it?  Tarred?  Haw Haw!) so we reboarded our fossil-burner and followed the ubiquitous asphalt slurries back down to the South Bay.  It was one of those stunningly bright almost-winter days where the late afternoon light seems to make everything seem just a little nicer than you know it really is.  I almost found L.A. pretty on our way home.  Almost.