A Lou Bega Halloween

Jack Hanna and the Columbus Zoo have been in the news quite a bit lately following the bizarre situation where dozens of exotic animals were killed in Zanesville, Ohio. When I lived in Columbus over a decade ago, my Ohio State student organization volunteered at the Columbus Zoo for their Halloween event. While I’m sure that some of the animal exhibits were open, I was involved in the haunted house portion of the zoo’s Halloween celebration. Specifically, the zoo staff dressed me up in a scary costume, and I jumped out and screamed to scare people as they rounded a corner. I did such a good job that Jack Hanna himself complimented me on my performance.*



While I had a great time scaring folks, there was a logistical problem when large groups were involved. There were times when I jumped out from around a corner to scare a group of people in the front of the group, but couldn’t really do much for the folks at the end of the line. It’s not like I could jump out, then go back to my hiding spot and jump out again. Instead, I would start talking to people. When that proved unsuccessful, I just started screaming random things. To go along with one of the most popular songs of the day, I randomly yelled “Mambo Number 5.” Not the actual song lyrics, just the song title.



Surprisingly, this went over remarkably well. So for those of you celebrating Halloween, may you have a little bit of Monica in your life.

Sadly, I’m unable to share the video for Mambo Number 5 here. Please click here to watch the video and have the song stuck in your head the rest of the day!


* This may or may not be true..I would lean towards it not being true.