Being Two at the Zoo.

I was brought to the zoo by my grandson the other day.

He’s at that happy age between two and three, where the assignment is to absorb every ounce of information from his surroundings. He focused his powers of concentration on that.

I took care of the more mundane tasks associated with our visit. Getting us there in a car. Handling affairs at the zoo’s admissions desk.

I also pushed the stroller. When my grandson noted something of interest the drill was as follows: squat down, lift him from the stroller, hold him up so he could see to the back of the habitat, set him back in, and repeat. The Marines could use this exercise at boot camp

It was a cool, rainy fall Friday. Other than those groups that had arrived on the school busses lined up at the back of the parking lot, most children of prime zoo-going age were away tending to the more bookish side of their educations. If you got the rhythm of your visit right you could avoid the big school groups and have the place virtually to yourself.

We were at Minnesota’s new zoo, it being built just over 40 years ago. The other zoo in the Twin Cities is the Como Zoo, built in Victorian times. There is a lot to like about the Como Zoo, including its urban setting and a glass conservatory that takes its design cues from the old Crystal Palace in London.

But on this rainy fall Friday it was the new zoo. Its defining characteristic is space. The zoo’s director once told me the other zoo directors envy his ability to create big natural exhibits for the animals to lose themselves in.

What fascinates me about a zoo with so much space is you never know what to expect. The star attraction of one visit may be a total no-show the next time you’re there, sleeping behind a tree somewhere at the far back of its habitat.

I’m sure the animals like this better and so do I. There’s something right about never quite knowing what you’ll encounter. It’s like a trip into the wild. The random element, luck, always plays a role.

The random elements are even more at play when you see the zoo through the eyes of a two year old. You arrive with a well-defined plan of attack. But your tiny captain determines the line of march, calling out preferences from his seat in the stroller.

This adds a magical quality to the trip, in particular if you’re a grandparent grown accustomed to traveling with the adult herd and its straight-ahead proclivities. Right now you’re two years old yourself, hunkered down at the toddler perspective, your eyes as wide as his. The boundaries separating you from the wild fade away, and there you are. In it with the animal.

The penguins pop one at a time out of a cave at the back of their enclosure. Comedians taking the stage at the improv.

The Komodo Dragon, from the perspective of a two year old, is every bit the real dragon from the story books. He’s climbed up high in his lair, looking at you with ancient, steely eyes. He pokes at the air with a forked tongue as long as your forearm. You are transfixed by his stare, unable to move on.

And then, another wonder. Down a long tunnel, you find yourself before a massive glass wall. On the other side is the tropical reef exhibit. It teams with bright marine life in dizzying motion. And right in the middle of it all, a guy. A diver, blowing a stream of bubbles up to the surface of the water, methodically cleaning the coral.

To an adult this is routine maintenance done on a quiet fall Friday at the zoo.

To the two year old it’s breaking the fourth wall of the imagination. The guy! What is he doing in there? What’s on his feet? What is that thing he’s holding?

If that diver can be in there, surrounded by so much wild and exotic life, so could any of us. On the drive home my grandson talks only about the guy. I’m going to be that guy when I grow up. I’m going to be that guy for Halloween.

I take this as a good sign. The animals you meet at the zoo are on the job. Working animals employed as ambassadors for their endangered species and vanishing wild. We adults can read the plaque about the threats of ocean acidification, increased carbon dioxide in the air, water pollution and careless tourism. When you’re not yet three years old it’s enough to make a connection with the fascinating animals. Hopefully you will grow up into the sort of person that wants to be on their side.

For my grandson, seeing himself as the guy in the diver’s suit working in the middle of all that astonishing life made the connection even stronger.

It was dark the next morning when he woke up. The sun wouldn’t rise for well over an hour. What do you think that guy is doing, he asked me. I imagined the guy was still sleeping.

I rested my head on the edge of the bed and asked him if he didn’t think he might want to sleep a little longer. No, he smiled, full of energy. He composed a small morning song to get things moving:

Hold me down from the bed, Papa.

Hold me down from the bed.

Rum tum tiddly tum,

Papa, hold me down from the bed.

A mash-up of roots music and Winnie the Pooh. Obviously there would be no more sleeping. I lifted him out of the bed. We went downstairs in our pajamas to make breakfast and talk about the guy swimming in the pacific reef exhibit at the zoo.