About A Stepdad

Animal Magnetism

When in the zoo, see the animals. Here they are.

The elephants I like. The Prettiest-girl-in-the-world is worried that one is just swaying side to side. She says that’s a bad sign.

I think the elephants are ok. I say they have each other. They are super social.

She says, yeah, but what if they hate the other elephants? Like one’s from Surrey or something and the rest are from Kerrisdale?

Good point.

We watch an elephant getting hosed down. She seems to be loving it. She must be from Surrey. Apparently not all elephants love it, though. They keepers do their nails sometimes. Like a spa. I think the Kerrisale elephants like that. But not today. No one’s getting their nails done.

The boys find a huge elephant statue. When they stood underneath it, the Prettiest-girl-in-the-world and I get the giggles.

This is a nicer picture. The first one we took made them look like they were getting a semen sample.

However, the boys love to touch things, to climb on things, and this zoo understands that. No, no, they don’t let children play with the lions (much to the youngest’s disappointment) or throw poo back at the monkeys (again, much to the disappointment of the youngest), but they have animal statues or mock construction equipment to climb on, so we let them burn off excess energy by hopping on everything.

And hey, while they climb, we sit down. Win-win! We encourage them to climb for as long as they want. Sadly, they get bored and we have to walk again.

The oldest says horses in real life are bigger than in minecraft. I think that’s a good observation.

We a see a camel.

No one cares.

We spot meerkats hiding in tunnels they dug. They are cute. One looks like me on a sunny day, lying down with his belly up. The oldest admires how many holes they have dug. He is, afterall, a minecraft guy. Diggy-diggy holes. It’s an important skill.

We walk right by the big lions and don’t even see them. I still have no idea how we did this. However, we later discover they were, surprise, surprise, sleeping (and I think hiding from us.)

As we go into the reptile and big-ass bug area, the youngest decides it’s a good idea to bang on the glass to get the attention of a scorpion.

Outside the reptile area, the oldest talks to a cage full of birds. He has a love/hate relationship with birds. As long as they are caged, though, he’s happy to have a chat with them. When they’re flying at his eyes, not so much.

We all think capparbarras are cute.

I ask the oldest what he thinks a dung beetle eats.

He looks at me like, well, by now you should know.

We find a cage full of monkeys. The youngest declares he wants a monkey. He thinks if he was a monkey, he’d be the one leaping from branch to branch. I think he’d be the one throwing poo. The oldest thinks he’d be the monkey sitting and thinking about things. They both think that their mom would be the monkey licking her face. I laugh. Out loud. The Prettiest-girl-in-the-world scowls at all of us.

We watch a honey badger play with his toys. We have to drag the youngest away. I dunno if he likes the badger or wants to play with the toys.

We shake our heads as a three morons make whistling noises at the animals right by a sign that says, hey moron, please do not make loud noises, these animals are sensitive to noises. I don’t want to stereotype, but fat, red faced and white. The mom comes by and yells at the top of her voice. Be quiet! The animals hate loud noises!

Does she get the irony?

We see the cutest ugly things in the world. Wart hogs. We see a little one. But he’s photo-shy. Maybe if we yelled at the top of our lungs we could have made him stop running around.

We stop for food. Not surprisingly, the Asian restaurant has chicken strips. We are thankful. Surprisingly, the chicken teriyaki is pretty good. The Prettiest-girl-in-the world says the ginger chicken wrap is as well.

The oldest braves the PUBLIC bathroom by himself. This is a big deal.

I wash out the plastic souvenir cups. We now have a very fine collection of them. We will definitely need another bag when we go home.

With tummies full and feet a bit sore, we go in search of a bus to take us around the rest of the park.

I won’t say it was only because we all were feet-sore. but there was no way in hell we were going to walk more, so, yeah, we took the tour bus.

More to come.