The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions

With Melanie out of town and a Saturday to fill, I figured I would take Connor and Harper somewhere new. The perfect pandemic outing was a drive-thru farm with a variety of animals about 40 miles up the road toward Columbia, South Carolina.

What could go wrong?

Connor is a beast when it comes to getting ready to go to school. When it comes time to go just about anywhere else, he basically needs to be tugged out the door. Not much changed there, but when I was loading up the car with an assortment of snacks, water and coats (if we got out somewhere) Connor worked his way into his seat.

With the kids in the back left to their own devices, I navigated our way to the interstate---almost. After 20 minutes and in sight of the on ramp, Connor looked up from the iPad and nonchalantly announced, “I don’t have any shoes.”

OK, it was a bit annoying since I had been telling them both to get their shoes and socks on beforehand, but we had all day to kill so back we went and roughly two hours after the journey began we arrived at our destination.

The lady at the front gave us two buckets of food for the animals and warned us about not giving the aggressive zebras any. They would be the least of our problems. We slowly made our way to the entrance which in retrospect looked like the entrance to “Jurassic Park.”

A big furry thing made his way to my window and was gentle when I fed him, so we were off to a good start. He was just the advance scout, however. A llama (I think) approached Connor’s window and the feeding started politely until he jammed his head in the window and started to feed out of Connor’s bucket. My attention immediately shifted as Harper started screaming and crying. I turned to see a huge ostrich, also with his head in the backseat, grabbing her bucket, attempting to drag it out her window. I was able to snatch it from the fuzzy marauder but not before the contents were deposited over Harper and the entire backseat.

The incident reminded me of the time Melanie and I were in Rome with her mother Marie. Standing in line for the Vatican, I was trying to shoo away some street people who were bothering Marie. At the same time, another one had snuck up us and had her hand in Melanie’s handbag, but was scared off by others behind us before she could make off with anything. I think the llama and ostrich have their game down better.

I was now in the process of rolling up my car window when another beast thumped its hairy hooves up on the car, scratching the window in the process.

So we have Harper in the back crying, Connor freaked out and after assuming I lost my phone out the window during the melee, I was a bit…perturbed. We pulled off to the side to regroup and I eventually found my phone under the seat; Harper stopped crying and Connor regained his composure, but the wail went up almost immediately, “I want to go home!!”

I would have been glad to head for the exit, but we were firmly tucked in the slow line of cars. We snaked our way around the farm for the next 30-45 minutes---with windows hermetically sealed---before we were able to leave, having never been approached by a zebra.

On the way back, Harper made it repeatedly known that she never wanted to go back and I was happy to assure her of that. A visit to McDonald’s drive thru helped quell their nerves some more and some five hours after the adventure began we returned home, all with Connor never having to put on his shoes.