Not so long ago, my family watched the movie “We Bought a Zoo,” an unlikely tale of a journalist mourning the death of his wife by buying and moving into a wildlife park.
At the time we watched this movie in our basement, I chuckled at Matt Damon as the sucker father relocating into a zoo in a quest to win his children’s love. Even if it’s very roughly based on a true story, I couldn’t imagine being gullible enough to let my children play me that way.
This week, I think about that movie in a whole new light. Why buy a zoo when you can just build your own?
On Tuesday night, our 9-year-old daughter brought home Rose, a rabbit that will be her 4-H project for the year. It’s her first time raising an animal for the club. It’s also the first time we’ve invited a breed into our home that we consider a nuisance when it’s bouncing through the back yard, taunting our pair of golden retrievers.
Then on Saturday, we picked up the newest member of the family, Belle. Supposedly this is a dog, but it appears to be about the size of the guinea pig we already had that our oldest daughter wanted about seven years ago. Our 8-year-old finally earned the pet after about a year of pleading, thanks to a markedly better grade card and work ethic at school.
While we don’t have a zoo at our house, we have a good start on a petting zoo. We now have three dogs (two big, one small), a cat, a rabbit, a guinea pig, a hamster, a bearded dragon and a tank full of tropical fish. We had a mouse for a few days over New Year’s, but that was decided not to be a pet and promptly removed from the home.
If the majority truly ruled, we’d have more cats in the house. It’s one of the few times I used my fatherly veto and it worked, since I’m allergic to and generally annoyed by cats.
I sometimes wonder why we share our lives with so many other animals in our home, especially when it’s 3 a.m. and they’ve decided they’re ready to visit the great outdoors, eat some breakfast and get a start on their day.
The benefits are countless to opening your life to animals, though, especially for your children.
I’m routinely amazed how much responsibility our girls take with their furry friends. Sometimes they’ll forget to brush their own hair, yet they’re happily brushing out one of the dogs. They may forget to eat anything healthy themselves, but they’re eager to bring some fresh vegetables into the bearded dragon’s terrarium. They complain more about cleaning their own living space than cleaning up after the animals.
More than anything, animals seem to teach our children how to love and care for all the creatures in the world. You can truly see their tenderness when they’re with an animal.
So yes, maybe our house is overflowing a bit with that kind of love and tenderness. But is that such a bad thing to teach your children?
Besides, it’s not like we’re like the family in the movie, trying to keep a Bengal tiger behind our house. Yet.
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