Daisy and the Trouble with Zoos (9 page)

After I'd blown out my candles, Mum, Gabby and Dylan sang “Happy Birthday”, and then Mum gave them each a mini roll too.

But not with candles. Because it wasn't their birthday.

Plus theirs weren't sticky.

When I asked my mum if I could have one that wasn't sticky as well, she said one mini roll was enough, and if I ate too many mini rolls, the zoo keeper would think I was an elephant.

Which isn't true either. Because I haven't got a trunk.

Or massive teeth.

Anyway, there weren't any more mini rolls left.

So we had apples.

The
trouble with apples
is I had one with a maggot in once.

It came off a tree in my nanny and grampy's garden. Luckily I didn't bite through the maggot, I only bit through its hole. But it still wasn't very nice.

I do still like apples because they're juicy, but I always double-check for maggot holes before I eat one now.
Especially if I'm at my nanny and grampy's house.

When we'd finished our apples, Mum looked at her watch and then put all our rubbish into a bag.

“I think we should make our way over in the direction of the penguins, don't you, Daisy?” smiled Mum.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” said me!

The
trouble with zoo bins
is sometimes they get really full. We had to really squeeze our apple cores in to stop them falling back out onto the ground.

But then Gabby's fell out again.

And then Dylan's fell out when Gabby put hers back in.

So in the end Mum put all our
apple cores back in the bag, and said she would take our rubbish home.

After we'd visited the litter bin, we went to look at the meerkats.

The
trouble with meerkats
is, WATCH OUT IF YOU'RE A SCORPION OR A SNAKE!

Because if a meerkat catches you, it will gobble you up!

Lots of people had adopted the meerkats. That's because meerkats are really good.

It said on the sign next to the adopting plaques that meerkats are immune to deadly poison! That means that even if a snake bites and bites and bites them or a scorpion stings and stings and stings them, the meerkat will just eat the snake or scorpion anyway. Without being poisoned or even getting a tummy-ache!

Dylan said he wouldn't let a meerkat anywhere near the snake tank in his bedroom.

And Gabby wondered whether meerkats could eat swede without dying too.

The next sign we saw was for the pygmy goats. The
trouble with pygmy goats
is their poos look like currants, which could be really dangerous if you were making cakes in the zoo.

Dylan said he didn't think zoos made cakes, in case of the stampedes, so we were probably safe, but Gabby said that in future if she ever went into a zoo shop to buy something to eat, she would never
buy a currant cake in case it had a pygmy-goat poo in it. In fact, just to be totally safe she was going to totally stick to ice creams.

The
trouble with ice creams
is it's really hard to get your mum to buy you one when it's March.

Especially if you've already had mini rolls and lemonade. Mum said it was too cold for ice creams, and anyway we'd all had a birthday zoo lunch.

The
trouble with birthday zoo lunches
is they really make you need an ice cream. Especially MY birthday zoo lunches.

It took me about ten minutes to persuade Mum that we all really really really needed ice creams. At first she wouldn't listen, but in the end she did a big sigh and she said we just had time to go to buy some, before we went to the penguins.

The
trouble with ice-cream cabinets in zoo shops on March 3rd
is there aren't any ice creams in them.

There isn't anything in them at all! Apart from cold air.

The lady behind the counter said ice creams were out of season and they wouldn't be getting any in until Easter.

So we had to have sweets instead.

The
trouble with sweets
is you're not allowed to feed them to the animals.

I saw some white-nosed coatis who really looked like they wanted a Tic-Tac, but Mum said all the animals in the zoo were on carefully controlled diets that didn't include Tic-Tacs, Refreshers or Hubba Bubba bubble gum.