Too the zoo!

Yesterday we took my youngest to the petting zoo. Now this is not some fly by night petting zoo, the kind the bring in to town for the Lion's Club carnival. No, this one is spread over a good few dozen acres and seems to be growing each year. While they could have more animals and a better variety it is nonetheless a great place for the kids and my son just loves to go there.

The entire way from pen to pen is a concrete sidewalk, so there is no walking in the mud and straw, and they have swingsets and play stations all along the way as well so that when mom and dad need to sit for a minute the kids can play on the slides, monkey bars or whatever else they might have open at the time.

Since me oldest is gone for the summer it is just my wife, myself and the youngest and he decided that yesterday would be a great day to just run, everywhere! From the moment we made it through the little turn style and in to the foot path he was off like a rocket, stopping only to make sure he pet every animal, including the pigs, along the way. I do believe the only other thing he stopped for was to have me hit the gumball machines filled with feed for the animals. Of course the machines are close to the pens and the second those animals hear a quarter hit the slot their Pavlovian conditioning kicks in and they head straight for you.

There are a few pens where the smaller animals are kept, like the baby goats (kids), so they will let you in with them through a sally port to keep the animals from escaping while the kids are going in. Of course the second my son made it through the inner door he was swarmed by about 5 goats looking for food. He got the biggest kick out of them eating from his hands but when they tried to eat his and then moms shirt...Of course I was laughing my butt off the whole time.

While he ran from pen to pen, squealing with delight, mom chased him while I played catch up. You can only go so fast with a cane and to my amazement people really do not care if you are disabled. There were a few times where people with wagons/strollers who even though I was off to the side of the path which is large enough to accommodate a good 8 people abreast decided to run me down. These were the same people who were to busy yelling at the kids to calm down, relax and pay attention... Makes you wonder why they bothered coming to the place at all if they are just going to be in a bad mood the whole time. It is supposed to be a place to relax and let the kids have some fun! We had a great time, even with the few dingleberries we encountered.

After the zoo we grabbed some lunch at one of the local bagel shops and then hit Sam's Club to get some things my wife needed for work. By the time we were done and loaded my son into the car for the drive home he was out and the time we hit the first traffic light leaving town he was snoring away.