Why Can't We Be Friends?

I have always loved going to zoos and wildlife parks. I love to look at the animals. My problem is that it does not seem like animals like me. I have been bitten and attacked by all sorts of animals.

The first occurrence of my bad luck came when I was about five years old. We were at Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch, which is a drive through wildlife park where you can feed the animals. When you enter the park they tell you that feeding the animals is at your own risk. They also tell you to drop the food onto the ground and do not feed the animals out of your hands. Well, I was feeding the animals out of my hands and it was all going great until we got to the zebras. In case you never knew, zebras bite, often, and one bit me right in the palm of my hand. To this day I am still frightened of zebras and their giant faces and teeth.

My fear of zebras is nothing compared to my fear of cheetahs. Most people probably think this is nuts, but I have a legitimate reason for my terror. We were visiting the zoo when I was around eight years old. I vividly remember that I was wearing a bright yellow shirt that day. The cheetahs enclosure could be seen from above as well as from a window at ground level. My family had walked down the stairs and was looking at the cheetah that was laying down a long way from the window and I had stopped at the top of the stairs to look at another animal. They had been watching it for a while when I walked down the stairs. When I reached the window the cheetah had seen me and run all the way across the enclosure and slammed into the glass window right where I was standing. I am pretty sure I cried or screamed or both. To this day I do not wear yellow shirts. I have bought yellow shirts a couple of times only to wear them and remember the cheetah. Those yellow shirts quickly got donated to the Salvation Army.

Then, there were several times I got bit by birds. Birds are mean and they hurt. Landa Park always has ducks and geese that people feed. When we would go to the park we occasionally fed them. The bad part comes when you quit feeding the geese or when they think you should start feeding them. They chase you down and will bite you. You may think getting bit by a goose is not painful, but it does not feel good. My other most hated bird is some kind of crowned something or another from Africa. I got bit by this bird at the zoo and it really, hurts. I won't lie and say that this was the birds fault. I was a dumb child who did not listen to my parents or obey the signs that told me not to put my fingers in the cages. So, I put my childish fingers in the cage to touch the beautiful crowned bird and instead of touching fluffy feathers, I got bit in the finger by a sharp beak.

The last bad animal encounter comes from my adult life. Let me just say I did not really learn my lesson from my past animal encounters. When I was pregnant with Little Bear, we went on a trip to Texas and went to Fossil Rim, another drive through wildlife place. I was feeding the addax and when I quit feeding one of them it made him angry. He somehow managed to get part of his horns IN THE CAR and was bashing me in the head with his horns and the top of his head. It was scary and painful. When he whacked me in the head, Popeye said I had a strange and confused look on my face. He asked if I was okay and I responded with something like, "Yeah, I guess so."  I was yelling at Popeye to "Go, Go" and he said something along the lines of "I can't his head is in the car," as I got whacked in the head again. I kept yelling and finally Popeye started driving. What felt like a long time later with a combination of Popeye driving and me shoving the mean antelope away we got away and I was safe again.

Since then, I really try to be more careful with wildlife. I have successfully taken Little Bear to a drive through wildlife ranch without any injuries. I don't stick my fingers through cages now. I don't feed birds. I roll the windows up when we get close to zebras. I don't wear yellow shirts. I hope my awful animal encounters are over.

The Great Rodent Escapades - A slightly gross, but funny story

Let me preface this story by saying, I hate wild rats and mice. I have a great fear and disgust for the nasty, disease carrying vermin. I come by it naturally; my mom hates them, too, and based on this story, my grandpa is not fond of them either..

When I was a high school freshman, my great-grandpa passed away. My family went down to stay with my grandparents to help clean and sort through stuff at my great-grandparent's house after my great-grandma had moved to a nursing home. My mom's side of the family lives in the country on a farm
so wildlife was always around, but I am happy to say we didn't always have face to face encounters with critters. This particular weekend we had more than normal.

For the first rodent story of the weekend, my cousin and I rode our bikes from my grandparent's house to my great-grandparent's house. The men had been cleaning and moving furniture all day. When we rode up into the driveway it was soaking wet and covered with nasty rat nest parts and dead rats. In their cleaning, they had found a huge rat nest and not knowing what to do they washed it out of the old piece of furniture with the water hose. They were everywhere. I was unprepared for that many rodents and thoroughly disgusted by the sight.

We were quick to leave and ride back to my grandparent's house. When we got to my grandparent's, I was tasked with emptying drawers in an old dresser so they could move it out and put a dresser from my great-grandparent's there. I went to work quickly, happy to have such an easy chore. That quickly changed when I opened the first drawer and took the towel or whatever off the top of the pile.


What I found made me scream, which in turn made everyone come running. It was a little mouse, the fact that it was dead and petrified did not come to my attention at the time of the scream. My grandpa ran in. He saw the little mouse laying there and reached for the closest mouse killer, a wire coat hanger. Why on earth he picked a coat hanger I will never know, but he used that wire coat hanger to repeatedly whack the little mouse. Whack, whack, whack went the hanger and bounce, jump, flop went the little mouse. By this time we had acquired quite an audience and most of us were trying not to laugh at the sight of Grandpa repeatedly swatting the mouse with a flimsy metal hanger.

The poor mouse was not alive or jumping. It was dried up, fairly flat, and most definitely dead as a doornail, but the banging it was getting from the coat hanger made it "come to life". Finally, my grandpa quit smacking the old mouse and used something or another to scoop it's dehydrated and dried body into the trash.

Thankfully, those were the only rodents I encountered that weekend. While I am not a fan of rodents, especially wild ones, this is still a story that makes us laugh, especially my mom who cackles hysterically every single time this story is mentioned.