Horsing around with the animals

I haven't had the best of luck with animals in my life. Here are a couple of my more amusing or bizarre stories.

In 1971, my parents and grandmother took me to the San Francisco zoo. I am retelling this story from my folks perspective, since I was too young to remember it. I was in a stroller when we pulled up to the monkey exhibit. Across the enclosure was one of the larger males. For what ever reason he zoned in on me and came rushing across the enclosure screaming at the top of his lungs, AT ME. My family thought it was the funniest thing. Eventually the zoo keepers asked us to move along so as not to continue upsetting the chimpanzee. I think it must have scarred me in a way that other animals picked up on for the rest of my life!

When I was a toddler, we went to a petting zoo. I'm guessing I was four or five years old. For some reason a cow took a liking to the cuff of my pants and started chewing it. I do remember this!! I thought the cow was going to eat me. I was watching my parents walking away, unaware of my situation. HAHAHA I thought that cow was so huge, I was sure I was a goner. My parent's heard my cries and came back shooing the cow away. Another good laugh for them!!

When I was six or seven I went to a friends farm. My friend and I went in to the pen with the goats. As we were getting ready to leave, one of the goats butted me and knocked me down. Once I fell, it kept butting me against the bottom of the fence. It hit me several times, but at the same time, there was enough of a clearing at the bottom of the fence where it basically butted me out under it. Fortunately, I just had some minor bruising.

Once, we were at pond feeding ducks and geese. Sounds pleasant enough. Apparently one of the geese didn't like the cut of my gib, and attacked me. I tripped and fell, and it used it's beak to pull at my hair. That sucked cause it hurt and was scary as hell!! My dad ended up kicking it to get it off.

Another zoo, we were standing at a cyclone fence looking at some lamas. A bunch of us had our hands hooked in the fence trying to touch the fur, and one bit my fingers, super hard! I ended up getting stitches.

In 1980, my family, along with another family, took a horse drawn caravan across Ireland. The parents of both families pitched in and got an extra horse for us to ride. During that week I had a tough time with this horse whose name was Mickey. Every morning, one of us kids had to brush and feed the horse. On my day during brushing, it stepped on my foot, and I could not push the thing off. Fortunately, one of the other "caravaners" came over, and helped me out and pulled it off. My foot was purple for at least a week.

When it was my evening to feed Mickey, it was the one evening where all the horses were penned together in a pasture. There was about 12 or 13 of them. I climbed the fence with a bucket of feed and started crossing the pasture to our horse, where they were all standing in a group. One of the horses turned toward me and started walking to me. Then the rest of the horses started following him. I got nervous! Then I started to walk backwards, and they kept coming. So I turned and walked a little faster and they started to canter. So then I broke out into a run, and they started to trot, so I started running as fast as I could, yelling at the top of my lungs and threw the bucket down. HAHAHA The grownups were just laughing their heads off as I practically hurtled the fence in panic. Yea, they yucked it up for a long time over that one.

Mickey was trained to follow the caravan but I don't think we understood what that really meant. When it was my day to ride, I took Mickey out from behind the caravan and trotted along side. Then we started to get a little ahead of the caravan, and I kept trying to get him to turn around. But Mickey knew the way, having been on this road a thousand times. He wasn't going to go the wrong way. He just kept on going. I was loosing site of my family!!! I kept trying to get him to stop and get off, but I has holding the reins wrong and he would just spin around me. I was stuck on this horse and it just kept on going. It finally caught up to another caravan, and just followed it. I would yell at the top of my lungs, trying to get them to stop, but they couldn't hear me. I was so far from my family!! I was scared, and crying, and here come the tour buses!! They all slowed down to take pictures of the little crying cowboy HAHAHA how humiliating!! Finally, luck turned my way! The lady in the caravan dropped her cigarettes. When they stopped, she got off to retrieve them, and saw me behind her caravan. I tried to explain to her that I couldn't get off, but she didn't speak English, so she got her husband. He didn't speak English either, but got the picture. He snatched me off that horse, tied the horse to a post, got back on their caravan and left. I just sat there....I wasn't even sure if my family was going to the same place as these other folks! I thought that I might never see them again!!! Finally, I saw my folks come around the bend. Talk about relief!! In the next two days, I totally avoided that evil horse!!! Unfortunately, I had to listen to the story of that trip a thousand times. It is one of my parents favorites!

The last bad animal experience I had, was about 5 years ago. I was volunteering at a special olympics. A woman was holding a huge rabbit with long droopy ears. This thing was as big as a dog!! She had it on a leash. It jumped out of her arms and ran straight for me, ran behind my feet, turned and started back to the woman. At the same time, she pulled back on the leash. It pulled my feet out right from under me! I landed flat on my back!!! I got knocked down by a rabbit, I kid you not. I was embarrassed but did the only thing I could think of and jumped up with a big TA-DAAAA and we all had a good laugh!!

Since then, I've learned to enjoy animals from a great distance! I don't go to petting zoo's, or even regular zoo's for that matter. I'll take a nice aquarium any day!!