With summer winding down, and hunting season close to kicking into full gear, the wife and I really wanted to do one last – purely for Abby – activity.   Then, one night while reading one of her favorite books, I instantly knew where we were heading – the zoo.

Abby loves to read books involving animals, and she loves to name the animals as we read through the books.  She loves all the animals – giraffes, zebras, elephants, deer, and turkey – just to name a few, and she takes great pride in knowing them all.  In fact, one night she even corrected me and let me know that the animal we were looking at was indeed a jaguar – and not a cheetah – as I originally thought.

We headed down to Binder Park Zoo last Saturday, and Abby had a great time.  Binder Park is a smaller zoo, but Abby didn’t seem to mind; it was a great way to get her outside, spend some time together, and actually let her see a few of the animals we read about in books.

It’s always a little unsettling for me to see wild animals stuck in an enclosure – but I just really think that visiting the zoo is the only way most people are going to have any connection to these particular types of animals; it’s the only way they’re going to have such an encounter, and it provides an open opportunity to educate them as well.  Plus, zoos do help many animals to breed and be released back into the wild; for example, Binder Park just recently released a Mexican wolf into the wild, and that wolf was one of the first to have pups in the wild as well.

The highlight of the day, though, was visiting Wild Africa and getting to feed the giraffes.  Abby and I were eyeball-to-eyeball with the giant-necked creatures, and they were more than willing to eat the lettuce we had for them.  Abby loved getting to touch the giraffes, but she wasn’t a big fan when it came to feeding them – their tongues are gigantic – and Abby wasn’t real at ease when they were sticking that thing out at us.  If the truth be told, either was I – they’re huge!

It was an educational, fun-filled day, though, and we had a great time as a family.

And as I always say, getting kids in the outdoors can be done in many different ways – even with a trip to the zoo.

Author’s Note: In case you can’t tell, in the second picture, we’re in an “African camp”.

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