Accosted By A Goat

During a trip to Oak Glen, Ca with the kids we happened upon the Zoo, now you just can’t go wrong with the zoo…Right? Benjamin was truly enjoying the zoo, being his first time amongst animals other than the family dogs, and right in the middle we found the petting zoo, live animals up close and personal, what could be better.

There were Lions, and tigers, and bears! Oh, my! Well maybe not, but there were Sheep, and piggies, and goats! Oh, my! And the little black piggy that continued running around from person to person, really made a pig out of himself stealing all the food from all the other animals, I could actually see why he was bigger than all the rest, Benjamin really had a ball here, laughing and touching all the animals.

Now as with any petting zoo you have signs stating things like, “These animals are on a special diet, feed only food bought from here”, “Do not harm animals, they are living creatures too”, “Do not approach a wild bear if you happen upon one, lay down and cover your head while playing dead”, maybe this sign was somewhere else but you get the idea, I have no problem with these rules but where are the signs for the animals to read? I mean there should be limits on what they can do to the visitors too.

While leaning down attempting to feed the piggy who was stealing all the food from Cindy, his accomplice approached from behind, a small goat actually crept up behind Cindy and began rifling through her pocketbook, I snapped a picture but didn’t actually catch him red handed…or hoofed, I just know at the end of the day Cindy was missing just enough money to buy one more cup of food, I bet he and Mr. Piggy shared the extra cup.

While getting up close to another, Cindy almost lost her shirt as this goat accosted her, not really sure that he would have looked good with Cindy’s shirt, he could have at least offered her a petting zoo tee in trade rather than just yanking on her shirt, I wonder if maybe he was in cahoots with the other two and was pulling her shirt up to look into her pocket?

Then there was the goat with the itchy head, just walked right up behind me and began scratching his head on my crutches, this was funny until he almost pushed it away from me, I politely asked him to stop and he gruffed then walked away, no more than he had left that another started scratching his head.

A bit further up the trail we got heckled by a bigger goat who was not so nice, he rammed the cage door with his horns and made some sounds that I shouldn’t repeat here, Elisa had to step in and explain to him that he shouldn’t be saying Baaddd words in front of the baby, I got a laugh when she told him to straighten up because if the chickens started using fowl language then it would be his fault, glad I didn’t get the blame for this one.

At the end of the day Benjamin was pooped, he used Granny’s shoulder to recharge his batteries so to say as we walked back to the van, we had fun taking Benjamin to his first ever zoo visit, animals up close and personal and he enjoyed every one, well almost every one anyway, the Baaddd one did startle him a bit, we never saw any wild bears and we all kept our shirts.

Benjamin and I had a little talk while everyone else was getting into the van, he should be able to come visit Granny and Papa more often he was telling me and he also said that he thought he would look good in a hat just like Papa’s.