Let me start by saying thank you to all of you who commented that you hoped I was feeling better soon.  I am.  The first best day was Saturday and the improvement has continued to the point that I no longer have any reason to put off housework.  I am always pleased when I receive comments, and those were especially welcomed.

Now, to the business at hand.  I decided on Saturday to ask the kids if they would like to take The Precious to the zoo on Sunday.  No.  We weren’t leaving him there.  We were visiting.  It seemed like the perfect weekend.  Temperatures have been in the low 70’s and the days have been sunny.  I was afraid if we delayed much longer we wouldn’t be so lucky.  They agreed and Sunday morning we took off.  I want it placed in print that I love my grandson so much I woke up at 8:00 a.m. on a Sunday when the Colts were playing just to take him to the zoo.  They arrived promptly at 10:00.  I had a crisis to manage and The Precious quickly grew tired of waiting on me and said “let’s get going.”  I threw the rest of my crap in a bag and off we went.  First we had to go pick up the family car since it has a Pike Pass in it.  The Precious was not amused that we had sidetracked.  He was zoo bound and hell bent.

We stopped in Siloam Springs for lunch and to wait for my son to join us.  This did not go over well.  We were told often that The Precious did not want lunch.  He wanted the zoo and only the zoo.  As fate would have it, he fell asleep in the car prior to arriving at the zoo.  He got about a 30 minute nap.  I was concerned that he would awaken in a foul mood, but he was too excited to be cranky.  He couldn’t get out of his car seat fast enough.  He had gone to sleep with a KC Chiefs stocking cap on his head and we took pictures of the fabulous “bed” head he was sporting as we took off on our adventure.  He did comment on the fact that he couldn’t see the animals from the parking lot, but was cooperative enough when we told him he would need to go inside to see the critters.

Our first stop was the ticket booth.  The ticket agent asked if we would like tickets to ride the train.  Well, I didn’t even ask.  I know how The Precious is about trains, so I just purchased round-trip tokens and went on through the turnstile with The Precious in hand.  About a half dozen steps in, he saw the train tracks.  Five seconds later he heard the whistle.  The excitement in his eyes was unmistakable.  He turned to me and said in a voice of pure astonishment, “a train!”  “Do you want to ride it?” “Yeth!” and off we went to find the train.  We arrived at the depot and curly-qeued our way through line.  We were in the front row.  The Precious was practically shivering with anticipation.  “Where’s the train?” was followed by “I gonna ride the train.”  I’m sure it seemed like an eternity to the two year old, but it was probably five minutes or less before the train could be seen winding down the track.  The Precious was standing on the fence top looking down the track when he spotted the train.  He was actually quivering with excitement.  “Where do you want to sit?”  “The front!”  The line began to move forward.  His little finger pointed stiffly at the front of the train, “this way Emmy, this way.” as we headed to the front of the train.  We reached the second from the front seats in the first car and I was just placing his little bottom in the seat when claws dug into my shoulder and toes clenched my waist.  “No!!!! I don’t want to ride it”  It was one of those guttural screams of primal fear.  “How about if you sit on Emmy’s lap?”  “No!!  No train.  I don’t want it.”  Even as I reconciled myself to the fact that this train would be ridden by The Precious only over my dead body, he was still screaming and crying.  Of course we all exited the train and went on to see what we could see.

Across from the train, stood a merry-go-round.  With his eye on the tiger he strode forward with the same excitement I had just witnessed.  “I gonna ride a tiger!”  A little wiser this time, I held his hand as we approached the line.  He was by far the smallest rider on the ride.  He kept trying to cut in front of the other children, and I kept telling him, “it’s not your turn.”  To which he solemnly replied, “not my turn.”  Finally the child in front of him passed through the gate and his angelic little face looked at me and smiled as he said, “my turn!”  By this time everyone in line had heard that this child would be riding the tiger so all of the other children stood clear so that he could have it.  We walked across the platform towards the tiger, and just as I started to place his precious little butt in the seat…  Well, I did manage to get him to sit on the bench.   I thought we were going to bail when the ride finally started moving, but he was fine…until about the third time around.  At that point the new had worn off and he was ready to hit solid ground.  Needless to say when we reached the camel (which you could ride) and he said he wanted to ride the camel, we just walked on by.

Finally, we were on our way to view the animals.  The first thing he saw was a giraffe.  He was amazed.  It was across the zoo, and not on the path we were taking but he had seen it and it was good.  We reached the elephant encounter amid statements of “I don’t want the efelant!”  When he saw the beast he changed his mind.  The amazement was clear upon his face…and then, the best thing happened.  The efelant peed.  We had already been discussing the enormous poop and how stinky it was and then it peed.  I have never seen anyone so excited by kidney emissions.  He couldn’t stop looking, and when it was time to go see another animal he wasn’t ready.  That was pretty much the norm.  He didn’t want to see whatever we were looking at, and when we were ready to leave, he wasn’t through.
He had the best time.  He had his mommy, daddy, and Emmy and all the animals at the zoo.  Life just couldn’t have gotten much better.  He ran his little legs down to nubs.  He chased some type of exotic bird through the bird house.  He bossed us all around.  He marched through the Tulsa zoo with just the same determination that took Sherman through Atlanta.  He was ordering his troops, and we were obeying.  His own personal ride (moi) occasionally tried to pass him off to his parents.  Sometimes it worked, but just as often it didn’t.  His mother tried to take him from me at one point and he told her, “I need my Emmy!”  Well I would have to be one hard hearted bitch to turn my back on that.  His cranky factor increased as the day went on and by the time the zoo closed at 5:00 we were all ready to get back into the car.  He lasted about 20 minutes and then he was sound asleep, before he went to sleep we stopped at a Sinclair station and it had one of the old green dinosaurs out front.  The Precious wanted to ride the dinosaurs.  I placed him on the creature and his daddy took his picture.  We placed him back in the car and he soon nodded off.  When we arrived in Siloam Springs to pick up his daddy’s car he sat bolt upright and said, “I ride the dinosaur.”  After that he settled back into his car seat for a quiet ride home.  He woke up when the car stopped and went in to tell Boppy and Ninna what he had seen.  The poop was mentioned first, but when asked about the animals he would tell them about them.  I asked him at one point what his favorite animals was that he had seen.  Not missing a beat he said, “the rabbit.”  No one else had seen a rabbit, but we were all pleased that he had enjoyed it.  Even if it was a little Harveyesque.

One little aside to parents…as we were standing at the tiger exhibit and watching the majestic cats, a squirrel ran across the grass and six or seven children stopped looking at the exhibits (including The Precious) and screamed “squirrel!”  So the next time you want to take your kids to see wild animals you might just want to go out back and look up in the trees.

One little aside to the designers of small zoos…don’t build a playground in the middle of the park.  Parents always have a limited time to try and get their children through the zoo before it closes.  If they have to take two hours out of the day to watch their children play on the playground it is harder to manage.  In addition, if we wanted to watch our children play on the playground we could do so for free much closer to home.

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