Memories from the Forgetful

My mom hates the zoo. It's true. Growing up my sisters and I didn't ever make a trip to the zoo with our mother, unless it was with a field trip. (Our mom was a good helper in the classroom.) This is the first exhibit and she was already looking pretty happy that she came along with us. Can't you tell?



The best part is that it was not just her four grandkids, I also brought my sweet niece Emma (10), and my funny (I will share some quotes later) nephew Evan (8). So six kids on a hot day in the stinky zoo for 2-3 hours. Recipe for success. Meet Emma and Evan.







Sweet beans came too! She is a ham. I love this kid so much. I do wish my son didn't want her pink crocs though. Can we donate those soon Allison? Look she's showing them off.



Harrison loves the monkey exhibit it is his favorite! Here he is telling Grandma all about it.



Oh yeah and Lincoln came just to look cute. He did a good job.



This woman loves the zoo! This is Grandma Cheryl she makes everything more fun. The picture isn't too great, but can't you tell how excited she is just to be at the zoo?! I love her!



OK! So I had to come home and write down Evan's quotes from the day right away!

On the way down there Emma and Evan were telling me about a show they watch with their dad called "When Animals Attack". Emma told me about an alligator who pulled a boy under the water and chewed his arm off. Evan shared about a whale that took a woman 40o feet under water and she lived. I am wondering how this is measured, I don't trust it. Maybe he made that up? Then Evan shared a story about a man who lost his eye to a jaguar.
Emma told him it was called a cougar.
Evan said, "Who cares? Anyways, the COUGAR "attackled" a man and scratched his eye out, but the man had a knife and stabbed the COUGAR in the throat."
Disturbing right? But did you catch what made me giggle? He made up his own word. It was not attacked or tackled but a combination. At the time, I think maybe I just heard him wrong so I do not feel the need to correct him. (And I kind of think the word is awesome so I am hoping he says it again.)

While we were at the zoo we walked up and down the dreaded bear hill, it is so steep and difficult to push a double stroller up. While we were in front of the ?black? bear exhibit Evan starts exclaiming "There's an egg! The bear's egg is in there!" I smiled and let it go for a bit, but he continued to talk about the bear egg. He will be starting school in just a couple weeks and I did not want him to tell people he and his Aunt Andrea saw a bear egg at the zoo. So I tried to explain it couldn't possibly be a bear egg, because bears are mammals and blah blah blah... He stares at me for a while and says "Oh, well... maybe a bird dropped it." I didn't have the heart to tell him it was a rock so I just smiled and nodded.

On the way home he asked me "Do you know if pandas can climb?" I told him I was not a Panda expert and I couldn't give him too much information on this. He decided to take advantage of my lack of knowledge to make up a story.
"I saw a movie and they said pandas climb 400 feet into trees, I'm pretty sure."
Short pause
"And they climb even higher in bamboo, they said pandas climb 500 ft in bamboo"
I'm also not a bamboo expert, so I did not correct him, but I'm pretty sure Bamboo doesn't grow to be 500 ft.
Later he told me that men can be attackled (Yes, he really is saying my new fav word "attackled") by deer.
I asked what makes a deer attack?
"Sometimes when guys wear too much deer pee.... deer will attackle them. But I don't blame the deer... I blame the man... He wore too much deer pee."
Evan thank you for the information! I will remember to keep the deer pee to a minimum.

Last but not least, I saw a dead raccoon and made the "roadkill chill" face. He asked me what was wrong and I told him about the raccoon on the side of the road.
Another pause


"I like to see dead animals on the side of the road."

WHAT?!?!? What did he just say?

I couldn't let this one pass. I had to tell him how disturbing it sounded, he smiled and explained he doesn't like seeing cute animals dead, just nasty ones. Oh my what a funny/weird/exhausting day. I got an animal overload yesterday. Animals dead, attackling, stinking up the place, and so on. I'm glad I do not have pets, I couldn't take one more dose of animals this week.