Farm Animal Kingdom

Yesterday, I took D2 to Linvilla Orchards. This, my friends cuttlefish, is a local place that not only, as the name suggests, grows and sells froots and vegetables, but also has a not-petting zoo thing. The reason I call it a not-petting zoo is because the animals are in pens and some of them you are asked not to touch. But you can feed some of them. Just NOT the horse. Even though lots of people still try to. Apparently, illiteracy problem in USA is worse than most of us realize.

Anyway. I knew that I had to take it slow, because this boy notices EVERYTHING, wants EVERYTHING, and so gets overwhelmed easily. So first we went to see the chickens. Because they're dumb and just walk around and don't try to overload you with their antics.

D2 has seen chickens (hens, really) in his baby books, and was totally unimpressed.
The live ones, though - O. M. G. Liek seriousleee. D2 was floored. He had never before supposed that such creatures existed in real life.
One can, as alluded to before, feed the chickens with a bit of purchased dried corn. Kids who do so often drop said corn, and there are plenty of kernels lying around for me to pick and give to D2 to give to the chickens.

But no, corn was not cool.
Now, pebbles, maaaaan.
We respect the pebbles.
And D2 picked real boulders, too, because the kid is super nice and nothing's too much for such magnificent creatures.
So, he'd throw the pebble through the fence, and the chicken would just look at him, like, DUDE, what the EF? And D2 would point to the pebble, sweetly, like, no, no, it's right over there! You missed it.

Yeah.


Eventually, I convinced him to move on, so we went to see the ponies. Such wondrous creatures as ponies were completely beyond D2's expectations, and they must've really blown his mind, because he just stared for a while as kids wobbled atop little horsies and then just pitifully threw himself at me to pick him the hell up. He wasn't scared, mind you, he just really couldn't deal.

Then we went to see the geese and ducks, who, thankfully, played along with me and actually made sounds like I promised him they would. (Dumb chickens played, well, dumb and never even clucked). So D2 made sounds back at them. I felt like we were getting somewhere.

Some kids were throwing pebbles at the ducks, or, rather, their pond, so I steered D2 in the direction of the goats. And MAAAAAN, were we in for a sweet treat! Turns out, goats eat corn. I mean, not much of a surprise, because, apparently, goats can eat ANYTHING, including poison ivy, but anyway, there were lots of dried corn laying in front of their pen, so I picked some up and fed them to the goats, who eagerly licked it off my fingers. D2 was amazed. He, too, wanted the goat to lick him. So he started with the pebbles again, and it just shows how much he wanted the goats to lick him, because I did manage to persuade him to get crazy and try the corn. Not to eat, to feed the animals.
Goats licked the stuff off D2's hands and he was delighted, crowing, so I had to dig for more corn, and he fed it and the goats ate it and D2 crowed again, and we repeated the process.
Many many times.

Eventually, I felt like we should be moving on, but it was a bit hard. When D2 is on task, there's no deterring him.
By trickery and brute force I did lead him to the horse, and D2 was mollified. I mean, HOOOORSE! It goes "YAAAAH!" (according to D2 it does, though the horse continued the same game as chickens and just looked at everyone). So, D2 just yelled, "YAAAAAAH!" in a deep baritone for a while, then we saw the chickens again, and had to go throw some more pebbles at them. The birds were still reluctant to change their corn-eating ways, so we went back to the goats and then we got overloaded and decided to cope by laying in the dirt. Mom was not on board with this new development, and so a small skirmish ensued. Mom emerged victorious, though, carrying D2 under her left arm, while simultaneously cleaning sticks, straw and corn off him with her right. WHILE WALKING! Though, admittedly, not chewing gum. So mom might not be quite the bee's knees yet.

Anyway, D2 was mollified with apples (it was enough for him to know that we're taking them home and he was a good boy and didn't try to stuff them in his mouth once!) and we went home after paying approximately $20 for 5 apples. No, just kidding. $50 for 2 apples! Wait, no, still kidding. It was reasonably priced, thought I can only justify buying apples there when it's a Big Deal (™), like D2's first foray into the farm animal kingdom.