Let’s start at the beginning. On Tuesday we woke up early so we could get to the zoo around lunch time. I put Samuel in his special zoo outfit – swim trunks with zoo animals, a shirt with animals in a safari jeep and, to top it off, a safari hat with little zoo animals around the brim. Then I slathered him up in sunscreen. He was ready! We loaded up the car with his stroller, structured backpack carrier, a picnic lunch, a change of clothes in case Samuel wanted to play in the fountains, snacks for the ride and a fully stocked diaper bag.
The ride up was pretty uneventful. We just made a pit stop to get a couple Subway sandwiches for our picnic lunch. When we got there things started to take a turn. Parking was a mess. We finally saw a lady leaving so we waited for her to load up her kids and get out of there. As would anyone else who had been driving around a parking garage for 15 minutes. Some nut had the bright idea that he should get out of his car to let us know how much he appreciates having to wait an extra 3 minutes so we can have this lady’s spot. I pretty much told him to suck it up. Not that I wanted to be confrontational but I can’t stand people who feel the need to go on crusade about something as ridiculous as a parking spot.
We get parked and unload our baggage then get Samuel set up in the backpack carrier. Dad straps him on and we get going. We get into the zoo and head for the first interesting animal – the lions. We look around, and then look around some more. No lions. Okay, moving on. We head over to the zebras. Whew! The zebras are out. We turn on the video camera, expecting Samuel to get really excited about seeing his favorite animal from the books we read, and he could barely even looked. I think he briefly pointed but that’s about it. So this went on with just about every animal there. He did seem to like the leopard but I think it’s because they had the poor animal in a tiny glass enclosure and it was thisclose to us. Whatever, at least my kid was entertained. The other animal Samuel seemed to like was the Komodo dragon. Random, I know.
About 2 hours in Samuel fell asleep. It was a hot day and most of the animals were hiding in their caves or a shady reclusive spot so I can imagine he was pretty bored. I had hoped he would make it to the monkeys since they are usually pretty entertaining but he was passed out. Allen and I kind of walked around for a while on our own but the thrill was gone. We stopped by and saw the spider monkey, which really does crawl just like Samuel with his bum in the air, and then skedaddled.
I’m still glad we went even though I don’t think Samuel really understood what was going on. I’m sure in his little baby mind this is just another time when he has thought, “why do these crazy people keep dragging me all of these strange places with strange people (and now strange animals) when all I really want to do is take a big nap snuggled up on the couch and then play with my toys.”
