Have you hugged a giraffe today?
Maybe you should.
The 2,000-pound animal thrust his head between my daughters’ little bodies. My eight-year-old fed him more grass. My six-year-old kissed him on the cheek.
“Is that safe?” Allie asked.
“Sure…” I took a few more pictures. “If he were dangerous, the girls would be dead by now.”
My wife rolled her eyes and began to say something uncomplimentary.
“I meant to say,” I interjected, “if giraffes were dangerous, they would have made the fence a lot higher.”
We stood on the porch of our cabin at Safari West, a 400 acre wildlife preserve in northern California that includes free-roaming rhinos, zebra, cheetahs, cape buffalo, thousands of colorful noisy birds, and a dozen species of quadrupeds with comically shaped horns. And of course giraffes, one of which extended its six foot neck over the fence to receive some food and affection from my daughters.
“I don’t think the girls are supposed to feed the animals,” Allie said.
“If that were the case, this park wouldn’t allow kids,” I replied. “Kids always feed animals. That’s a law of child physics, right up there with diapers always get crapped in and children always interrupt their parents to prevent siblings from being conceived.”
