Taking your kids to the zoo is one of those parenting rites of passages. Have baby. Must go to zoo. Our local zoo is in Edinburgh and I remember hopping on a 26 bus to drag my toddler son to the zoo only to find the hilly walks quite exhausting and the sleeping or hiding animals not that exciting to a two-year-old with a five-second attention span.
Quite simply, it was all a bit over-rated. Plus, I remember the stony silence that greeted me when I cheerfully shared my weekend adventures at the zoo with colleagues. Clearly, attending a zoo was no longer considered an ethical pass-time, and I had committed some sort of social faux-pas.
Up close and personal with an egg-eating snake
I’ll confess something here and now. I’ve never been a huge proponent of animal rights. It goes without saying that I don’t want to see unnecessary cruelty inflicted on any vulnerable creature but as far as causes go, there are others that ignite the fire in my belly more.
Since becoming a parent I’ve started to change, however. I don’t know if that’s because my maternal instincts have been sharpened and extended to cater for all living things or if seeing the world through a child’s eyes has made me more aware that we have to do more to protect it and the creatures that inhabit it.
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Reading with Toby 