Petting zoo

One of the things we did with the Piggy while in California was take him to a petting zoo in the historic district of San Juan Capistrano. I had done some reading on the place and saw that they had a variety of exotic and not-so-exotic animals. There were ostriches and alpacas which remained in their pens but could be fed from outside, and goats, guinea pigs, and rabbits that you could actually pet and/or pick up.

I knew that the bubs would enjoy the experience, but there were definitely a few surprises. For starters, we picked up a few vegetable and fruit slices and a scoop of rabbit feed (gross, pellet-y stuff) to entice the pet-ees in our direction. I should have seen it coming, but when I tried to get the Piggy to give a piece of carrot to one of the goats, he crunched it down himself. Same with the apples. The one thing he didn't show much interest in were the lettuce leaves; he was pretty good about feeding those to the guinea pigs and rabbits. He also kept wanting to eat the rabbit feed and he did at one point succeed in downing some of it while we weren't looking. He really is a completely indiscriminate eater.

We were quite amused by his interaction with the animals. When we went into the goat pen, the goats were pretty aggressive. They were jumping all over me, Jared, and the Piggy. We were logistically challenged by trying to wrangle the Piggy, keep the food high enough that the goats couldn't knock it out of our hands, and take pictures without dropping our camera. We were quite a sight. The Piggy did pet some of the goats, but he also fell or got knocked over a couple of times. At one point he was lying on his back in the middle of the goat pen with goats swarming all around him and I was yelling at Jared to help him get up before one of the goats stepped on him or kicked him in the side of the head. Luckily he didn't seem overly traumatized by the experience. He's a pretty resilient little fellow.

We really had to keep an eye on him with the smaller animals. He has a way of aggressively trying to grab handfuls of their fur which is startling and, I'm sure, somewhat unpleasant on the receiving end. When he caught on to feeding them, though, things were a bit more manageable. He also enjoyed feeding the alpacas, to the point I was afraid he would get a finger chomped on. I'm a bit tentative around animals myself, so the Piggy's complete lack of fear makes me a bit nervous. At the end of the day, we emerged unscathed and only slightly smellier than before, and will probably go back with both kiddos sometime in the future.

I have pictures of all of this and I am absolutely committed to getting them up this weekend, along with some other vacation photos. Good times.