A few months ago my brother, sister-in-law, and myself took my 16 month old nephew to the zoo for the first time.
He was attentive, always looking around. Kinda interested in the lion and gorillas. The elephants held his interest for a bit, but not for long.
But then we walked up to the goats. Regular goats. The boy started cracking up. It was as if the world peek-a-boo champion surprised him. He was laughing, smiling, trying to get out of his stroller to grab a goat.
We all just stood around looking at each other confused. I mean, we were happy he got excited over an animal, but a goat? Obviously I got him a stuffed one for Christmas.
There’s a commercial playing right now (I think it’s for Microsoft’s Cloud) that has a kid getting a really cool hovering toy thingy, and the kid is running around the house with the box it came in.
Aww. Adorable. Was the goat in a petting zoo are? Maybe he liked that he could see it up close and that it was more on his level? I know that at the Bronx zoo a lot of the animals are set up so they’re a little hard to see (some are right up against glass, like tigers and gorillas) but lions are off a ways.
My mom chaperoned my nephew’s third grade class on a trip to Charleston. The only thing they saw, if you ask them, is when the horse drawing the horsedrawn carriage pooped.
I remember my friend from Christchurch, New Zealand came up to Chicago to see me on her honeymoon.
I was showing them all around Chicago and they were like “Oh yeah yet ANOTHER tall building.” Not impressed terribly, when all of a sudden Karen grabs her husband and says “Look Dave,” and they point at a squirrel, and he says “Oh my God, it’s a squirrel and it’s not even in a cage, it’s just running around.”
They had never seen one before. But I’m thinking of all the things in Chicago THIS is what impressed them?
When me and my girlfriend took her nephew to the zoo, the only damn thing he wanted to look at was the trees and woods landscaped around the zoo. He didn’t care at all about the animals. Who knows, maybe he’ll grow up to be a forest ranger or something.
A friend of mine went to the zoo with his girlfriend and her kids, when they asked the youngest (about 6) what he had enjoyed most about the day he said it was when the vending machine gave out 2 kit-kats instead of 1.
My daughter, now 11, was FASCINATED by the goats at the petting zoo, more so than any of the other animals she could touch or see up close.
I have photos of her as a baby/barely toddler stroking and rubbing their ears (which seemed to be her fixation).
I think it has something to do with texture (bunny noses, goat ears, horse noses…that velvety softness) AND the general approachability of the animals who have that. But kids are simply drawn to animals like an iron filing to an electromagnet…and our modern world so limits their contact that they go nuts when they get to actually see up close and TOUCH one that it seems a bit extreme.
And hells yeah, a big ol’ BOX is always way better than whatever came in it.
The best are refrigerator boxes…you can spend weeks making that into a house. (I have helped do so several times;))
God, I LOVE kids…they are so much more pure, real and rational in so many ways than we are after we grow up and are conditioned out of our innate tendencies.
My little brother, aged 5, just before a vacation to the US, announced “Tomorrow I get up, I get dressed, I brush my teeth, I go to America, THEN I GET TO EAT LUNCH!!!”
One of the neat things about goats from a kid point of view is that you can squeal and grab at a goat and they’ll just try to see if you have any food.
Um.
This is from what I’ve witnessed. I don’t believe I’ve ever squealed and grabbed a goat. And now I look like I’m protesting too much. Aiieee!
I’ve always been amused by the kids at the zoo being distracted. I’ve stood there for minutes watching some random kid’s parent try to attract their attention to an animal that is rarely in plain sight (red panda, for instance) while the kid is chasing around trying to keep an eye on a chipmunk or a rabbit.
Or their ice cream cone. There was a family at a petting zoo I saw years ago that had just gone for ice cream. Parents and two kids. They entered with ice cream cones. They left with NOTHING.
When my son was three a friend flew in one afternoon and took him and me on an airplane ride. No matter how much I encouraged him to look out the window he was much more interested in some empty gum wrappers in the ashtray.
When Army friends came to visit from Texas was it our clear skies, green fields and wildlife that impressed them? Not. It was cupelos. Cupelos!
