Goatmania

Today we went with Kaitlyn and her mom Kelly to go check out the Jura Zoo over in Neumarkt. It was more like the wildparks, except that it wasn’t free. They had a pretty odd assortment of animals in zoo terms: chickens, flamingoes, goats, sheep, koi, monkeys, owls, rabbits, turtles, guinea pigs… that’s not all of them, but sort of illustrates the “odd assortment” idea. It was a fun outing, but I’m pretty sure we won’t be back. It was €6 for me and Wee Laddie to get in, and then lunch was another €15 and I didn’t even order a meal for Wee Laddie! I just looked at the Tiergarten Nürnberg web site and admission there would’ve been €7.50 for the 2 of us (he’s still free) and that’s a full-on regular zoo! It’s farther away, but it’s a really nice zoo.

The goats were in a petting zoo kind of pen with a sign saying “Eingang” (entrance) on it and we’d bought some goat food, so we went in. Wow, was that an error in judgment. So was me letting Wee Laddie walk in on his own instead of carrying him. First, one of the goats got out into the 2nd penned-in area, so we were trying to herd her back into the main pen. (It was just the 4 of us out there, with a dozen or so goats.) While we were working on that, all the rest of the goats pushed their way out, too. So now, pretty much all the goats are in the 2nd area with my son, and Kelly, Kaitlyn and I were all in the big pen. I have to say, I’m incredibly impressed with how well Wee Laddie handled himself. I was trying to muscle my way past the goats to get to him w/o letting the rest of them out. Both fortunately and unfortunately, Wee Laddie was carrying one of the bags of food. Fortunately, because he could hold it out and the goats went after it and not him. Unfortunately, because they might have left him alone completely if he hadn’t had it. So he’s in the pen by himself with all the goats going, “Uhhhhhh… goats eating Wee Laddie!” I just kept telling him he was okay and that the goats just wanted the food. And it wasn’t that long ‘til I got to him, but it feels so long when it’s your baby you’re worrying about, you know? He did great, though… didn’t even cry. And once I was holding him, he was even throwing food to the goats. What a trouper!

Thankfully, we’d bought 4 bags of the food, as I’m not sure how we would have gotten out of there otherwise! I put Wee Laddie over the fence so he could watch safely from outside. We squirmed our way into the 2nd pen part, and kept tossing the food back in the main pen and the goats finally all went. Yikes. I’m sure it’s fine if there are loads of visitors or whatever, but we didn’t fare so well being outnumbered 3:1.

After all of that madness, we were ready for some lunch. The food was good but seemed pricey to me. The menu was interesting, in that most of it consisted of schnitzel prepared with different things on top. Wee Laddie and I had one with pear and gorgonzola. They had a cordon bleu one that I considered. Kelly’s had some mushroom sauce and cheese on it. Wee Laddie wouldn’t really eat any meat and I had to really cajole him into trying some pear but he liked it once he tried it. It was good, just maybe not 15 euro good.

There were maybe 20 or so tables in the food area… about 17 of them empty. A couple (who were somehow connected to the people who run/own the place) came and sat at the table right next to us. I thought that was a little odd, but whatever. And then, this being Germany and all, they started smoking. Hey, let’s go sit by the toddlers and have a smoke. Come on.

On the way home Kaitlyn was very tired and was crying. Wee Laddie was looking over at her saying, “Awwww… it’s okay.” So sweet. And she fell asleep on the way. Wee Laddie finally fell asleep once we were back in my car. But despite skipping nap yesterday and such a busy day today, he only napped 1.5 hours.

We picked up frozen pizzas for dinner… first time we’ve done that here. Sure won’t be the last, though. The pizzas were like 2 euro each and we had 2 of them total. 4 euro, dinner for 3, no prep time other than preheating the stove and opening the pizzas? That is a beautiful thing.