Gideon Goes To The Zoo

When you’re po’ folks with no cable TV, obviously you miss out on Animal Planet and Discovery Channel. All you can offer your child is looking at the rabbit ears.

So to keep Gideon from being culturally deprived, Melissa and I took him to the Nashville Zoo at Grassmere for the first time. It was an educational experience for all of us.

I learned that one of the best ways to develop carpal tunnel syndrome is to try pointing at things a two-and-a-half-year-old should find of interest. (“Look at the giraffe! No! The giraffe! Not that cigarette butt -- the giraffe!”) It’s a little like trying to get the attention of Congress. (“Look at the health care issue over here. No, over here. No, not the gay flag burner -- the health care issue!”)

Gideon learned that he could make Daddy turn different shades of color by ignoring the Bengal tigers and stomping on the storm drains. Can you imagine what today’s biological diversity would be like if Noah’s sons had been toddlers when he constructed the ark? Noah would have been preoccupied with bringing plumbing fixtures onto the ark two by two. And he would have sent out a dove to pick up a Home Depot circular.

I learned the futility of trying to snap a picture of the animals with Gideon The Human Blur in the foreground. I could almost hear Marlin Perkins sending Jim in with the tranquilizer gun in an episode of “Mutual of Omaha’s Caffeinated Kingdom.”

Gideon learned many screeches and howls of the animals. Of course one of the most blood-curdling screeches turned out to be Daddy seeing the $3 hot dogs and $2 vending machine soft drinks. It was then that I dispensed with the standard advice (“Don’t pet the animals. You don’t know what diseases they might have”) and went with the more practical (“Buddy up with the red panda and see if you can score us some of those bamboo shoots. It’s either that, or nibble the rabbit ears when we get home.”)

Gideon did pay rapt attention when two rhino hornbill birds got into a fight. One hornbill was enjoying a salt lick when the other sneaked up and bit it on the neck. A pity we didn’t get Kofi Annan’s autograph when he showed up to scold the first bird for provoking the confrontation.

We didn’t want the trip to be too oppressively educational, so we stayed away from the binomial nomenclature (you know, Tropidoclonion lineatum and the like) and went with familiar bite-size terms such as “fishie” and “birdie.” We did share with Gideon an amusing fact about Swedish botanist/physician Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), inventor of the highfalutin Latin-based binomial nomenclature. Linnaeus’ mechanic swears he would always bring in his Volvo with a complaint like “The thingamabob makes a funny noise when the whatchamacallit lights up.”)

I learned to be specific when talking to Gideon. I told him that Batman lives with bats, and he though I meant the specific bats in the Unseen New World exhibit at Grassmere. I suppose its plausible in this era of eminent domain. A shopping mall would bring Gotham City a heck of a lot more tax revenue than the Batcave.

Even though it looked like things weren’t sinking in, Gideon kept babbling about his trip after we got home. He took his zoo map to bed and kept rehearsing the day’s events (seeing the cheetah, riding the kangaroo on the carousel, etc.) . I think this will make a permanent impression on him. Perhaps someday he’ll have children of us own and regale them with the events of July 29, 2006. (“This is the story of the elephant savannah. No, not the story of the cigarette butt. The elephant savannah! Pay attention!”)