I knew that Timon and Pumba were the meerkats and the warthogs. That was easy. The goats I wasn't too sure about. I told her that there might be goats in the barn - our zoo has a family farm exhibit that has rotating farm animals like sheep, pigs, cows and chickens. It kind of cracks me up, but I guess it is the Big City and some kids may not get exposed to a farm. I grew up on one so it seems weird to have them at the zoo.
The zoo is for exotic animals.
Sometimes the zoo has a petting zoo that has pygmy goats in it. Haley has only been in the petting zoo once in her life and it was a long time ago. I didn't think that was what she was talking about.
To pick up the story where I left off, we got out of the elevator and walked to the Zoo. Haley got excited again. This is where she wanted to be. There was no line so we went up to get our tickets. My husband took Haley into the entrance, there is a whole section that you can walk around in before they will check your ticket.
I caught up to them and I finally realized what she was talking about. I had totally forgotten about the Mountain Goats at the entrance. Haley didn't. That is what she came for. She was so excited. We were lucky because the mountain goats were out walking around. It was the first of many animals that we would see in action. It was cold. All of the cold weather animals were happy.
We tend to go to the zoo in the summer. A lot of the animals just lay around in the warm weather. Today they were very active.
When Haley goes to the zoo she has an agenda. She knows what she wants to see. She usually names an animal like the giraffes and then won't stop talking about the giraffes until she sees them. Today of course she was interested in seeing Timon and Pumba. She took off like a shot.
The bears were active. Haley's Big Sis and I wanted to stand still and watch them. Haley was on to the next thing. She didn't stand still and look at anything. Her Dad and I took turns following her around the zoo.
At every animal we stopped at she would announce the next animal she wanted to see and she was off again.
We almost lost her in the bats. We were all watching the bats and next thing I knew Haley's Big Sis yelled "Haley!" and took off. I looked around and didn't see her at all. She was around the corner and gone.
Those long legs of hers were going to be the death of me.
Haley finally got to see Pumba. Timon was in another area of the zoo.
Then there was the other thing, besides the animals that Haley has to see. The Zoo Train. We could here it. We saw it pass in the distance a couple of times. We had tickets to ride it.
After we saw all of the animals that Haley wanted to see the only thing left for her was to ride the train. Once that was done, she was done.
We wanted to go see a couple of the more active animals again, but Haley just wanted stand and stare at the train, so her sister and I let her do that while we visited a few more animals.
Then Haley had a fit.
I couldn't really figure out what she wanted. She started yelling random things like, "Leopard." "Train." "Animals." It went on and on.
I didn't understand.
Her Dad said that he thought she had just reached overload and it was time to go.
She heard that and said, "Store." We can't leave the zoo without visiting the Gift Shop. Haley had brought some of her Christmas money and she wanted to shop.
She was prepared to buy every small plastic animal they had in the shop, but I helped her narrow it down to a lioness and a baby zebra. She wanted to get the mama zebra too, but her sister reminded her that she already had one. She still wanted it, but I asked her sister to put it back.
Then we got back on Max and headed home. She seemed to like the ride back a little better than the ride down.
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