Tales from WannaBea Farm

Joyce Stark “The zoo”, I yelled, spinning around with joy, “the zoo, we’re going to the zoo!” I was so excited, telling my friend about it. Neither of us had ever been to a zoo before, but Mama had just told me that we were going in the morning.

I nearly drove my mama crazy, asking questions about what animals we would see. Would there be baby animals? Would there be tigers? On and on I went, asking my questions until Mama told me if I didn’t shut up that we would NOT go.

That night I was so excited that I could hardly sleep and I lay in bed trying to think of the main ones that I wanted to see. I wondered if they had snakes and if they did would Mama let me see them.

She hated snakes and had once locked me out of the house while it was pouring rain until Daddy got home because she just THOUGHT I had a snake. When Daddy got home I was in more trouble for scaring Mama and I tried to tell him that I had already thrown the snake away before Mama locked me out. But Daddy wouldn’t listen. “How many times have you been told, NOT to scare your Mama”, he asked. Oh well, that was over and maybe if I was extra good tomorrow, she would let me see them.

Leaving home for the trip across town, Mama told me that we would go to the museum first and then after our lunch we would go to the zoo. Sitting in the back seat, I couldn’t make up my mind whether to pout because I didn’t want to see the museum or be happy that I was going to the zoo.

Once inside the museum, I was entranced and didn’t really care if I saw the zoo or not. I felt like I could just spend my life in this building, there was so much to see. And then, looking up, I saw it. The head of Black Diamond. It had always seemed like a fairy tale to me, but here he was, his head riddled with over a hundred bullet holes from his execution. As young as I was, I had heard about the elephant called Black Diamond and his rampage through Corsicana, throwing people around, trampling others and killing a lady. I just stood there gape mouthed, staring up at him. He was really huge and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see the elephants in the zoo after all.

After stuffing ourselves with Mama’s fried chicken, potato salad and fried apple pies, we staggered towards the zoo, where I did my best to be on my best behavior. All the animals fascinated me, but none of the elephants looked as big as Black Diamond. And finally, Mama agreed to see the snakes.

With just one double door, and glass fronted enclosures down each side of the damp, dimly lit building and water standing in puddles everywhere, it was creepy even without the snakes. Mama was a wreck, but she bravely went from one snake cage to the next until we were at the back of the building where the huge python was caged.

As Mama gazed at the snake in horrified fascination I spotted a little mouse nibbling on a piece of popcorn somebody had dropped. “Mama”, I started to say, then remembered that she was almost as scared of a mouse as she was a snake and snapped my mouth shut.

But, too late! As Mama turned to me, she startled the mouse, which then ran across her foot, and Mama, thinking that the snake was out, went completely crazy. Screaming, she literally tried to climb the wall. Daddy was trying to hold her and calm her but it was like trying to hold Black Diamond with a jump rope and of course Daddy was looking around trying to see what had set her off. They had completely forgotten about me.

Of course Mama’s screams had alarmed everybody else in there and they were all screaming and trying to get out the one door all at the same time. It looked like a Keystone Kops movie.

Me? I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever seen and was laughing my head off when Daddy finally got her calmed down and I heard my mama scream at me.

“You think it’s so funny? I hope that snake eats you!”

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