Yesterday was Petting Zoo Day for The Pony. Which is not to say he was curried, petted, be-ribboned, or be-bowed. He was along for the ride, not to be ridden. I asked him about his duties with the kindergarteners he was accompanying.
"So, did any of the kids get bitten by the animals? I've heard that there are signs on the pens that say "Animals WILL Bite." In fact, Tomato Squirter, from The Semi-Weekly Meeting of the Newmentia Lunch Time Think Tank, was the one who told me. That's because she's such an animal lover, and she has a season pass for her family, and every time she goes there, she sticks her hand in the pen to pet the animals, and they bite her. Or maybe they have special animals for the little kids. I'm pretty sure they couldn't offer school field trips if a kid was always getting his hand chomped off by a critter. What did you do there? Did you pet the animals?"
"I had to watch and make sure the kids didn't do anything they weren't supposed to to the goats, and that the goats didn't do anything they weren't supposed to to the kids. One kid pointed at a cow's udder, and asked what that was. I said, 'I don't get paid enough to answer that.' It wasn't a black-and-white milk cow. It was one of those that the females have horns, too."
"So after you left there, you went to the park? What did you do there, play with the kids?"
"At the park, I walked around with Mrs. Blank, and kept the kids from running off."
"How did you do that?"
"I hollered their name and said, "GET BACK HERE!"
"You might not be missed after your last day."
"Why? That's how Mrs. Blank did it."
"What did you have for lunch, since I didn't pack you one?"
"I ate the Cheetos and Famous Amos that I took just in case."
"Did they offer you the school lunch?"
"Yes. It was some kind of COLD ham sandwich! Yuck!"
"It may come as a shock to you, but that's how many people eat their ham sandwiches."
"Not me. Besides, we had lunch around 10:30, so I had just eaten that sausage biscuit you bought me on the way, and I wasn't very hungry. So I had the Cheetos and the two bags of Famous Amos and the Little Debbie brownie that I put in my backpack."
So you see, The Pony didn't starve, even though his pastry kitchen was not in operation.
Val--Was this the zoo in the city? Was a rare sighting of The Pony in his abhorred-habitat so close to being possible (and yet so far)?
ReplyDeleteSioux,
ReplyDeleteNot a city zoo. One closer to the Mansion. In fact, I drove him all the way to school, where he boarded a bus to drive all the way back past the Mansion, then back past the Mansion to the park and school at the end of the day, where I drove all the way back from the Mansion to pick him up.
You would have needed some mighty powerful binoculars to observe him, Madam. The school is not going to waste a real zoo on kindergarteners. Some of them probably think they DID go to the real zoo.