| "Simpson Safari"
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| Episode Information
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"Simpson Safari" is the seventeenth episode of season 12. It originally aired on April 1, 2001. John Swartzwelder wrote the episode and Mark Kirkland directed.
Synopsis
Promotional image for the episode
In a frantic search for food Homer finds a box of thirty-year-old animal crackers, which contains a gold giraffe - which means he has just won an African safari.
Plot
When Maggie eats a magazine, Marge demands that Homer go to the grocery store to pick up some food. While there, Homer (and all the other shoppers) offends the bag boy, causing all the bag boys in Springfield to go on strike. The bag boys also prevent anyone from carrying their groceries to their cars. When all the food in the house is gone, Homer becomes desperate and goes in the search of some food. Santa's Little Helper finds a 30 year old box of Animal crackers. Homer bites into a giraffe-shaped cracker and realizes it's made of gold, which means that the family has won a trip to Africa. The makers of the animal crackers (who no longer produce the crackers) refuse them the trip, but when Homer hurts himself on the corner of the box, they reconsider, as they don't want to be sued.
When they arrive in Ngorongroro, Tanzania, the Simpsons see billboards with messages such as "Hail President Muntu", who their guide, Kitenge, informs them recently seized power. We then see the family staying in a treetop hotel, then going on safari in the Masai Mara, visiting Olduvai Gorge, and spending a day with some Maasai tribesmen. The family then join the tribesmen in a tribal dance, and Homer, while attempting to play the drums, accidentally beats the rear end of a hippopotamus, which enrages it. They use a tribal shield as a makeshift raft to escape down the river, but take a wrong turn, get swept over a waterfall, and end up far from the Maasai village. Suddenly, a chimpanzee appears, and lead them to "Joan Bushwell's Chimp Refuge", which is run by Dr. Joan Bushwell (who is voiced by Tress MacNeille). Dr. Bushwell tells the Simpsons that she is in Africa because she is researching chimpanzees, but, when Greenpeace arrive at the refuge, the family discover that she has enslaved the apes and is making them work in a diamond mine beneath the refuge. Fearing the repercussions for what she has done, Dr. Busswell attempts to bribe the Simpsons and the people from Greenpeace with handfuls of diamonds. The next scene starts with the family sitting on the plane to go back to Springfield, with all of them but Lisa carrying a small fortune in diamonds. Out of the window of the plane, they see a new billboard which reads "Hail President Kitenge", with a picture of their old guide in the presidential robes that Muntu was wearing earlier in the episode. Marge asks "What happened to President Muntu?", at which point Muntu appears dressed as a flight attendant and says "I don't want to talk about it.". Muntu begins handing out peanuts, and the family all laugh as the plane takes off.
