Rangas Attempt To Sook Their Way Out Of Free Tickets To The Zoo

Chris Lilley’s incredibly successful ABC series of last year Summer Heights High managed to make the term “ranga” (as in, “orangutan”) the number one term of affection for red heads in both school yards and offices around the country. Personally, I am all for rangas. I think they are quite adorable, in an endangered sort of way. When a ginge falls out of the Hotness tree, they not only hit every branch on the way down, but the tree falls over and crushes them, leaving nothing but a squished mess of fiery spunk, and oh god, what am I saying again?

Oh yeah. Rangas. They’re lovely, but sometimes they’re really stupid. Dudes, if you can get free stuff like tickets to the Zoo just by allowing someone to refer to you as a “ranga”, for god’s sake, do it!

ADELAIDE Zoo has dropped an ad campaign offering free visits to all “rangas” to highlight the plight of orang-utans after sensitive redheads complained.

Last week, advertisements ran offering “free Zoo entry for all rangas” during the school holidays.

“Ranga” – an abbreviation of orang-utan – is a common nickname for redheads.

“We seem to be getting quite a bit of a negative reaction to that request,” said Zoos SA’s director of conservation programs Kevin Evans, The Advertiser reported.

“People are possibly more sensitive about it than we thought,” he said.

If they’d launched a “double the price for rangas because they’re crap!” campaign, I could understand why the campaign had resulted in a mob of surly gingers. But free entry somewhere? Why would you not make the most of that?!

Thankfully, the donning of sadpants by fantapants has not stopped the Zoo from offering free entry to those of the rouge persuassion. Hell, you don’t even need to be a real red head! That seems like cheating, if you ask me.

The zoo will continue to offer free entry to people with red hair for the next two weeks to raise awareness about orang-utans being endangered in the wild.

The campaign is timed to coincide with the birthday of the Zoo’s male orangutan, Pusung, and will include daily talks about the species.

Dyed red hair will qualify for free entry and zoo staff will not seek proof that patrons are natural redheads.

“We’re not actually checking tops and tails, or anything like that,” Mr Evans said.

Good to know.

I used to work at a Zoo, and the one thing I love about the orangutans is that they’d often be pissed off that they’d been put out “on display” for the photographic delight of tourists instead of hanging inside, so they’d often sit there with potato sacks over their head (to spoil happy snaps) and wait until they’d be let back into their enclosure.

I could also tell you of their ingenious and worryingly evil escape attempts, but I don’t want to scare the children. AND DON’T GET ME STARTED ON MOTHERFUCKING CHIMPS.

MORE: Zoo drops ‘Ranga’ free day campaign