Recently, my husband decided he wanted to take our 8 month old daughter to the zoo for her first time. We chose the Columbus Zoo because it is the closest to where we live. We picked a day between Mother’s Day and his birthday so we could consider it a Mommy-Daddy-Family Day celebration. However, the day we picked happened to be the wettest day of the week. From the beginning I was unsure how an outdoor activity was going to go on a rainy day with a baby in tow. But my husband’s exuberance left me with no choice but to be hopeful.
So we headed off to Columbus to have our big day. It rained and drizzled the whole way and was still quite damp when we arrived. As we came up over the hill to the parking lot we noticed there were a few spots available.
“I feel like we’re at Wally World,” he said.
Well, it’s raining on a weekday. I think we’ll be able to park close to the entrance,” I replied. It was true. In front of us lay a sea of open spaces and it appeared as if even the staff didn’t bother to show up. So, we parked up front and set about doing our "New Parent" dance. This consists of scrambling around the car to gather up lost shoes, binkies, extra wipes, etc., wrestling apart the stroller, over-packing supplies in our travel bag and assessing what we will and will not need in order to survive the next two hours in the “jungles” of the zoo. We are not really trekking into the Amazon but we pack as if we are.
Fully stocked, we headed in. We grabbed our map and discussed our game plan. It seemed logical to my husband that we should start with a petting zoo. There, Mariella would be eye to eye with animals more her size and, with the exception of the goats, less likely to eat her. Once there, however, we realized that a baby who uses her hands more as chew toys rather than for means of production really should not be petting anyone who takes no offense when his friend poops in his food dish.
Instead, we looked at them from a comfortable distance and then moved on. We really wanted to see what was new at the park so we headed next to the polar bear exhibit. We found two very lazy polar bears, which could care less about us, and a slew of small children dizzying their over-caffeinated moms. Mariella was fascinated! This was the best exhibit ever! Children acting like monkeys and mothers acting like lions! It was fantastically animated. The kids were yelling and running, climbing and clobbering each other. The moms on the other hand stayed in a tight little pack, talking amongst themselves, sipping from thermos mugs and occasionally screaming at one of their kids to “Get back here!”
Chris tried desperately to get Mariella to look through the glass at the bears but she could care less. The real show was all around her.
“Ugh! She’s not looking! I want her to see the bears. She’s not excited about the bears,” he said frustrated.
“Honey, she’s eight months old. How excited is she supposed to get about a white furry blob on a rock?”
“Well, I just thought she’d have some reaction,” he said, clearly bummed by his daughter’s lack of enthusiasm about her first trip to the zoo.
“Well, she likes the kids. She can’t seem to get enough of them. Maybe we should have taken her to the mall. There are all kinds of interesting people on exhibit there,” I said.
It’s true. If you think about it the mall is like a human zoo: people standing around behind big glass windows, looking as if they vaguely remember fresh air and freedom. There’s even fake plants and waterscapes to give the impression they’re in their natural habitat. I’m assuming that would be the Garden of Eden, I guess.
Anyway, we gave up on the polar bears and were walking out when we passed an exhibit where two gigantic grizzly bears were rough playing in the water. We drove Mariella up to the glass, assured she would find this astounding. She did not. We’re not even sure she knew they were there. Instead, she found her reflection in the glass and excitedly interacted with herself. Chris and I were in awe of the bears. These seven foot monsters with heads the size of my car tires came right up to the glass as they wrestled and bit. They snarled and bared teeth and claws. And Mariella smiled and waved at herself in the glass.
On the way out we passed some elephants doing some cool things like snorting mud and spewing it onto their backs but by this time Mariella was hungry so we stopped to give her a bottle. My husband was becoming increasingly disgruntled that she was not reacting as he had expected. She was being very self-involved.
We passed through the Asia exhibit and saw all kinds of wonderful things: tigers, giant bats, red pandas, langurs. They were all beautiful, incredible creatures. Mariella liked the waterfall. She stared, captivated by a man-made waterfall so we drove her up to it and stood there, staring at the water rushing down. She threw her hands up in the air and cooed with excitement over this.
“Well, you wanted her to get excited about the zoo. You didn’t specify which part,” I said.
By the end of our afternoon, we were all getting a little tired. The weather had cleared up and the sun had come out but we were ready to go home. We made one last stop at the gift shop to look around and walked out with a $20 souvenir stuffed elephant.
“I want her to have something special to remember her first trip to the zoo,” I said. “It’s important that she has something to commemorate this day.”
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