My children are gentle-hearted. Apart from Jonah, who is a craven lunatic. But this isn’t about him. Well, only partially. Perhaps it is, as usual, all about him. If my memories of carrying him around the VERY BIG local zoo hadn’t been so fresh, we wouldn’t have opted for butterfly world.
Now, butterfly world is very entertaining, as long as your idea of entertainment is an enclosed area heated to tropical blasts (think: a small broken elevator in the Congo), with giant things fluttering just close enough to your peripheral vision for you to have to resist smooshing them into a rainbow-coloured smear…
I’m thinking with adult eyes (eh?) again. For children it’s quite impressive- the butterflies just flitting around like lazy social networkers, drinking at one flower, stretching their wings on the greenery. There’s an area with live spiders and snakes (in terrariums), and another with rescued parrots and lizards.
Last time we went, the large covered area with the tiny blue duiker, iguanas and marmosets was the most popular. You know marmosets, right? Tiny monkeys, little progeria-faces, Oscar night hairdos? Yeah. Those. They swing all over the ropes, and drop onto your shoulders as you walk. Being the dad, I have to take care not to let a soprano screech slip out when that happens, and I try not to think of all the bacteria and the potential for disease. You’d expect them to be as cute as their National Geographic specials spindoctors make them out to be.
Truth is, they are vicious buggers. I’ll be fair, if I were locked up in a caged area, and only allowed to drop onto the shoulders of people who have nothing better to do then muss my hair, I’d be thinking of colourful ways of revenge, too. They were trying to climb into women’s handbags-making them look like Paris Hilton with a primate fetish, and generally seemed more agitated than normal.
Perhaps it’s that time of the month. Monkeys-on-heat-time. Now James isn’t the ugliest kid in the school, and I can’t think why a sex-crazed marmoset would consider him a threat, but one minute he was holding the thing, the next it had bitten his face, and was holding his cheek in a bite-pinch. I couldn’t pull it off, for fear of tearing the skin, and I had to watch this thing then bite his hands too.
Don’t panic. He just ended up with tiny indentations and bruises. But it does rather spoil your day when you are tripping through the butterflies one minute, being savaged by a possibly rabid primate the next. Brave boy just wept a bit. I would have been heading to the emergency room, having every tropical disease test known to humankind.
All in all, a fairly typical outing. Next time we go, I’m taking a mini-can of pepper spray, or a tiny stun-gun. The fuzzy headed freak’s gonna get it.
Now, butterfly world is very entertaining, as long as your idea of entertainment is an enclosed area heated to tropical blasts (think: a small broken elevator in the Congo), with giant things fluttering just close enough to your peripheral vision for you to have to resist smooshing them into a rainbow-coloured smear…
I’m thinking with adult eyes (eh?) again. For children it’s quite impressive- the butterflies just flitting around like lazy social networkers, drinking at one flower, stretching their wings on the greenery. There’s an area with live spiders and snakes (in terrariums), and another with rescued parrots and lizards.
Last time we went, the large covered area with the tiny blue duiker, iguanas and marmosets was the most popular. You know marmosets, right? Tiny monkeys, little progeria-faces, Oscar night hairdos? Yeah. Those. They swing all over the ropes, and drop onto your shoulders as you walk. Being the dad, I have to take care not to let a soprano screech slip out when that happens, and I try not to think of all the bacteria and the potential for disease. You’d expect them to be as cute as their National Geographic specials spindoctors make them out to be.
Truth is, they are vicious buggers. I’ll be fair, if I were locked up in a caged area, and only allowed to drop onto the shoulders of people who have nothing better to do then muss my hair, I’d be thinking of colourful ways of revenge, too. They were trying to climb into women’s handbags-making them look like Paris Hilton with a primate fetish, and generally seemed more agitated than normal.
Perhaps it’s that time of the month. Monkeys-on-heat-time. Now James isn’t the ugliest kid in the school, and I can’t think why a sex-crazed marmoset would consider him a threat, but one minute he was holding the thing, the next it had bitten his face, and was holding his cheek in a bite-pinch. I couldn’t pull it off, for fear of tearing the skin, and I had to watch this thing then bite his hands too.
Don’t panic. He just ended up with tiny indentations and bruises. But it does rather spoil your day when you are tripping through the butterflies one minute, being savaged by a possibly rabid primate the next. Brave boy just wept a bit. I would have been heading to the emergency room, having every tropical disease test known to humankind.
All in all, a fairly typical outing. Next time we go, I’m taking a mini-can of pepper spray, or a tiny stun-gun. The fuzzy headed freak’s gonna get it.
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