The Goat Yard and Mother's Day

Ok first of all now that school is about to start and I am always looking for an excuse to do something other than what I need to be doing, look for more of these to show up.  Alright that being said I have been working at the zoo now for well this would be my 3rd summer so we will say this is approx 3 years of parenting technique observations. 

Now you will have to allow for some individual variation as is typical to happen in any population, and I am just automatically removing any parents that come in on White Trash Wednesday b/c they would completely throw off my statistics and really belong in their own group anyway.

But and I know some of my more feminist leaning friends are likely to jump down my throat but well it has to be said.  This past mother's day I saw more definitive examples about why the females of the human species were traditionally more apt to be involved in child rearing duties, and the main reason is that dad's as a group all seem to suffer from some form of very extreme ADD when it comes to watching their children (I have also seen those who do not fit the typical stereotype but we are statistically speaking right so bigger picture everyone)   If any of you reading this have access to ER statistics on Mother's Day for children ages say 1-6 I would be interested cause I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts it goes up on the second Sunday of May.

So here are a few scenarios from this weekend.  Picture it, Goat Yard, Milwaukee, 2011 (thank you Golden Girls)  dad walks into the goat yard with what appears to be a 4 year old but I will be honest for some reason I am really bad at aging kids between 3 and 6, so we're going with the median on this one.  It's of course busy as fuck in there so I'm not paying too much attention to at first until I see that this kid keeps getting into things he shouldn't, i.e. behind the goat fence, chasing goats, you know wandering around aimlessly.  Most of the time Dad is catching this eventually (FYI he is in there with 1 kid, that's it, your primary responsibility is 1 kid) So obviously I am now kinda watching the kid a little closer, after getting hit with a rush of change requests I do my quick cursory scan of the yard, and what do I see 4 yr old face down on the goat yard floor mouth open.....drool/spit string hanging from mouth, licking of floor may or may not have been happening.  Dad standing about 10ft away looking I don't even know at what but not his kid......Ok I know I tease the parents that freak out about their kid touching their clothes/face/anything after feeding the goats, but even I have to say face down in the goat yard is gross and should be discouraged at all costs.  So anyway I'm staring for like 30 seconds I'm sure just in shock that this is happening and dad is not seeing it so I start walking over to pick the kid up/alert dad his son is having a make-out session with some goat urine/feces.  When dad finally notices, and he casually walks over and stands kid up....problem solved.....no discussion about how lying face down in this location is a bad idea, just stands him up and then continues to be oblivious to son.  

Observation #2 I will make shorter b/c the previous one got long, dad walks into goat yard carrying probably about a 1 1/2 yr old.  In the middle of our yard we have a sewer grate that you know water runs down and that we hose all the goat urine and occasional missed goat poo to every morning and with the slope and grade of the yard a lot of not nice stuff tends to accumulate there....you know it's a frickin sewer grate usually not nice things accumulate there.......now we walk all the way into the yard carrying kid and at first I think kudos to you dad for not plopping your kid down directly in front of the door that everyone walks through, folks we have a thinker here today.......but now we set the curious toddler 6 inches from the sewer grate that has been collecting small pellets that look a lot like the pellets you just gave him to feed the goats....where the hell do you think his little hands are going to go?!? he's certainly not going to be interested in the goats, but he will be interested in the funny brown/yellow water he can splash in and those little browner pellets.

Ok so long story short, the goat yard was a living Mother's Day card all day Sunday essentially showcasing all the reasons why it's probably a good thing that women were selected to be the bearers of children and the primary care givers for the first let's say year of life (i.e. breast feeding and such) because with the number of dad's who were apparently distracted by shiny objects last Sunday well let's just say thank god for Mom's.

Disclaimer:  To all the dad's who may be reading this, this is most likely not a direct attack on you (I promise) it's just some anecdotal observations and I am sure many of you are great dad's..... :)