Thursday, September 16, 2010

At the Zoo

There are lions and roaring tigers,
And enormous camels and things,

There are biffalo-buffalo-bisons,
and a great big bear with wings.

There's a sort of a tiny potamus,
and a tiny nosserus too -
But I gave buns to the elephant
when I went down to the Zoo!

There are badgers and bidgers and bodgers,
and a Super-in-tendent's House,

There are masses of goats, and a Polar,
and different kinds of mouse,

And I think there's a sort of a something
which is called a wallaboo -
But I gave buns to the elephant
when I went down to the Zoo!

If you try to talk to the bison,
he never quite understands;

You can't shake hands with a mingo -
he doesn't like shaking hands.

And lions and roaring tigers
hate saying, "How do you do?" -
But I give buns to the elephant
when I go down to the Zoo!

(The above poem is by A. A. Milne, one of my literary heroes. I added divisions to fit the number of pictures I had, and the lines don't necessarily pertain to the photos except that it's a poem about going to the zoo, and the photos were taken on a trip to the zoo. To read straight through the poem, go here.)

Last weekend we made the two-hour drive to the nearest zoo. We couldn't have asked for more perfect weather or better behaved children. We had fun introducing the boys to some wonderful animals which they have never seen before except in pictures. Little Man and Brother seemed to enjoy the experience as a whole, but Little Man said that his favorites were the monkeys, and judging by Brother's response, his favorite animals were the ring-tailed lemurs.

3 comments:

Sarah said...

Ohhh! I saw the title of your post, but the reference didn't hit me until I started reading the poem. That post brought back Wednesday afternoons at my house of reading poetry and eating lunch and hanging out.

No, not really what you were aiming for... but that's what I thought of!!

ben said...

This post is so adorable!

SarahZ said...

"I think, if I were King of Greece, I'd knock things off the mantelpiece" :)

My 2 boys were the same age as yours, when we went to the zoo.
Smiles, sighs :)