Daisy and the Trouble with Zoos (12 page)

Tiffany took loads of goes before she even caught anything.

By the time she'd put the bucket back in the penguin cupboard and taken me back to Mum, Dylan and Gabby, most of the people behind the glass had gone. Mum said the elephants were being fed at 2:30 and everyone had probably gone to see them.

Plus she said sorry to Tiffany.

Tiffany said it was OK and she hoped I'd had a good time.

I said I'd had a REALLY good time. Tiffany said I was SO good at throwing fish I'd be after her job one day. Then she asked me if I would like her job one day?

I said yes, but actually I fibbed, because I wouldn't want to do a job with a brown shirt. I wouldn't mind the badge though.

Except I think I'd want a growling lion on my badge. Not a paw print.

Then we waved goodbye to the penguins.

On the way back from the penguin house, Gabby couldn't stop giggling. Dylan thought it was really funny too.

“What if you'd hit a penguin on the head?” laughed Dylan.

“What if a penguin had thought the bucket was a fish? And swallowed it!” laughed Gabby.

That's the
trouble with Gabby
.

She might have had Wellingtons on, but she's not the slightest bit expert about penguins.

Then Mum asked us where we'd like to go next.

So I said, “Home.”

“HOME?” said Mum. “Surely you don't want to go home yet! We haven't seen the crocodiles, or the tigers or the vultures or the mongooses.”

So I told her I was really tired.

“You're not worried about the bucket are you, Daisy?” she said.

“You really shouldn't be worried about the bucket.”

So I told her that the
trouble with doing really good throws
is it can really make your arms ache, and that I REALLY wanted to go home.

“REALLY?” she said.

“REALLY, REALLY,” I said.

“But we haven't even seen the giraffes yet!” said Mum. “We must go and see the giraffes!”

“Yes, we have seen the giraffes,” I said. “They were over on the other side of the rhinoceros bit.”

“Well, we haven't seen the giraffes close up,” said Mum.

My mum really likes giraffes.

I said we didn't need to see a giraffe close up, because they're so tall. You can see a giraffe from anywhere.

So Mum sighed, and then asked Gabby and Dylan what they wanted to do.

Gabby said she wanted to go to the play area and Dylan said, “Are there any rhinoceros beetles?”

Which was a real nuisance, because I really wanted to go home.

Mum said if there were any
rhinoceros beetles, they were probably in the reptile house. But Dylan said rhinoceros beetles weren't reptiles, they were insects. Dylan said rhinoceros beetles are the strongest animals in the world and they can lift things that are 850 times heavier than themselves. Which IS quite cool, but I REALLY REALLY wanted to go home.

Luckily the zoo didn't have any rhinoceros beetles. They did have hissing cockroaches, but Dylan said they wouldn't be as good.

The
trouble with play areas
is the zoo DID have one of them.

When we got there, it had slides and rope bridges and tunnels and everything. Gabby and Dylan couldn't wait to go on them, but I REALLY REALLY wanted to go home.

So I sat on a bench with my mum.

“Are you sure you're feeling all right, Daisy?” asked Mum. “You love swings and slides usually. I can never get you OFF the swings and slides when we go to the park!”

I said I was feeling fine, but I REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to go home.

Luckily there was a puddle at the bottom of the big slide.

The
trouble with big slides
is they make you come down so fast, you can't stop yourself at the bottom.

So if there's a puddle at the bottom, your bottom goes straight in it.

Gabby came down first.

And then Dylan.

You should have seen Gabby's face. She had dirty puddle water all over her coat and all down her tights.

Dylan didn't get so much on him, because Gabby's bottom had already soaked a lot of the puddle up, but he still made his jeans really dirty.

Mum brushed Dylan and Gabby's bottoms down with her glove and then said that actually, it probably WAS time to go home.

Which made me really pleased.

“Have you had a good time?!” asked Mum. “Apart from the muddy bottoms!”

“YEEEESSSSSS!!!” we shouted.

“Have you had a lovely birthday, Daisy?” she asked.

“You bet!” I said.

“Come on, then,” said Mum. “Let's make our way back to the car.”

The
trouble with making your way back to a car
is you can never remember where you parked it.

Mum said she was sure our car was somewhere over somewhere, but when we got somewhere over somewhere, it wasn't there at all. There were so many lines of cars everywhere, we couldn't see our car anywhere.

First we walked down one row, then we walked down another row, then we thought we'd found our car, but it was someone else's, then we walked down about a hundred more rows, then we ended up back where we started, then we didn't know where we were.