Come, Mommy

One day this week I took the boys to a local zoo. It’s not one of the big zoos in Philadelphia or New York-those are fun too, but we had quite a heat wave going on and we wanted something to do that would get us out to  enjoy the relative cool of the morning before the afternoon heat hit the upper 90′s. This zoo is a kind of strange place. On the one hand, out front it is a pet store that does sell puppies and kittens. I know pet store puppies and kittens often come from puppy mills and the cat equivalent, so I do wish that they were not selling the animals. However, when you walk through the pet store and see the zoo, what you see is a home for a lot of wild animals that were initially purchased as pets by people who ultimately learned the hard lesson that wild animals do not make good pets.

So these former pets have a good life at this zoo-it’s not fancy, but all the animals have lots of space, toys, good food and clean water, and a caring staff. They have animals you might expect in this situation-wolves, dingo-domestic dog hybrids, lemurs, baboons, spider monkeys, and many kinds of smaller, cuddly-looking animals. They also have some giraffes. Now I have no idea who on Earth would think that giraffes just might be the perfect backyard companion, yet there they are. So anyway, there is some good being done here with these animals, and the boys love to come and run around and and watch the animals play.

We spent a happy morning running around and watching the ring-tail lemurs swing around in their trapezes. We watched the wolves running back and forth with a huge ball. Liam and Kieran occasionally were chased by some chickens of various breeds-the place has some free-range domestic chickens, and this time of year their are chicks around. The boys would get too close to the chicks either by accident or by intent when trying to pet the young birds. Then an angry mama chicken would scoot across the grass at the boy, wings flapping, cluck-cluck-clucking, and beak snapping. At one point one of the mother chickens actually managed to touch Liam’s hand. He ran to me unhurt, big blue eyes wide open, and said, “Wow, Mommy, that chicken is really scary when she is protecting her babies. I think that what sounds like ‘Cluck, cluck, cluck,’ to us, really means ‘Don’t mess with my babies, mister!’”

I had to agree with him as angry chickens do look like they mean business. Liam showed me where the chicken had nipped at his hand. “Mommy, I’m lucky she didn’t really peck at me. That would have hurt. Hey! I think I’ve just discovered what the word ‘henpecked’ means!” And off he ran, looking to tell Kieran of his new vocabulary edition. ( This is what we call “Summer Schooling”.)

It turns out that the chickens are not the only domestic birds in residence at this zoo. There are some Guinea fowl, and also about a dozen peacocks and peahens. One of the peacocks is an albino-he really is pretty. Our Indian friends invariably describe these birds as “varmits” and “pests”, and that they certainly can be as they are not shy about running up and grabbing tidbits of food from people, trash cans, or the grass. Ill behavior notwithstanding,though,  these birds certainly are beautiful. Liam found one long tail feather lying on the ground, and he picked it up, admiring the “eyespot” at the end of the feather. He got another vocabulary addition when he asked about how the feather shows all the colors of the rainbow as he waved it back and forth in the sun – I told him the word for that is “iridescent.” I love language and words, and it really is fun to share that passion with my son.

Liam ran back and forth across the grass with his brother, and after a bit he noticed tail feathers lying in various spots on the ground. Together the two boys made a game of running and picking up the feathers, and before long, they had a big bunch of beautiful feathers. Of course they both wanted to take the feathers home. I thought to myself, “What are we going to do with these feathers when we get them home?” After all, the feather are over three feet long, and the boys must have picked up about a dozen of them. But they really wanted to keep their feathers, so I promised they could keep them, and as it was turning hot, and the animals were all beginning to nap, we agreed it was time to go home.

Both boys fell asleep themselves on the drive home, so I had time to think about the issue of what to do with the feathers. Finally I thought of a spool of rainbow ribbon that I have that Liam really loves. He used the ribbon to wrap his teachers’ gifts on the last day of school, and we had some left over. I wondered if he might want to tie the feathers together into a bunch and use them to decorate his room.

When we got home I gathered up the feathers and tied them with the ribbon. When I showed them to Liam he was just so excited that he bumped his head on the stair rail jumping up and down with excitement. After we tended to the little goose egg on his head, the boys and I went upstairs and Liam found the perfect spot to display his feathers:

The picture doesn’t quite do the feathers justice because it does not pick up all the colors of the feathers and the beauty of the eyespots at the ends of the feathers, but you can get the idea. Liam tucked the feathers into the the foot of his bed, and they make a bit of a canopy overhead as he sleeps. He is quite in love with his feathers, and I have a feeling the collection will grow as we revisit the zoo. Kiri has some feathers of his own, and of course he wants his own beribboned bunch, so we have a little more crafting to do after our next trip to the little zoo.

Right now we are in the midst of a fun weekend that is giving me lots to blog about, and so that shall be the subject of my next post – thanks for checking in, everyone!

With Hugs from The Menagerie House!