Where the wild things are

Danette Goulet

Among the animals, wild children roamed.

A lazy, content llama lay surrounded by goats. Flopped down in the

straw, he watched, barely blinking, as dozens of small humans raced to

and fro.

“Jacob, Jacob -- I’m touching a chicken,” shouted 6-year-old Adam

Welch.

Then it was up and off.

Adam raced over to a pen where a wallaby lay curled up in a canvas bag

while a 1-month-old deer named Delilah chewed on the strap.

“What kind of animal is this?” Adam asked about the wallaby. “And

this? And this?”

Caretakers in the Great American Petting Zoo, set up in the Orange

County Fair, are always on hand, ready and willing to answer the

questions of curious patrons such as Adam.

They even do an educational show several times a day to teach visitors

to their petting zoo more about the animals.

“We just try to educate people,” said April Ford, who raises the

animals and does the shows. “We know they have questions that they don’t

always ask.”

Two or three times a day, she picks up a portable microphone and

speaker and begins to share her knowledge.

“His tail serves as a rudder,” she told a small audience, who oohed

and aahed over a wallaby. “His big toe serves as a weapon.”

Leaving the popular animal from the Australian outback, she turned and

picked up a fluffy, snow-white duck. She explained to children that to

float, a duck covers itself with oil released from an oil gland in its

tail.

Ford’s talks usually last 15 minutes to a half-hour, she said,

depending on how many people are listening and how many questions she

fields.

Some of the younger petting zoo patrons simply don’t have the

attention span for even half of her show.

Delaney Samuelian, 3, from Dana Point had no appreciation or

understanding of the show, but she had a grand time crouching down and

trying to feed goats by stuffing straw in their mouths.

Others tried to listen but were just too excited.

“Look what I found,” said Preston Ramano, 7, with glee, as he knelt

down next to a deer. “Oh, It likes me. It’s a reindeer, I think.”