My little sister loves animals. She is crazy about them. Every time we go to the zoo, we stop and stare at the hundreds of animals for hours on end. Now, don't get me wrong, I love animals just as everyone else, but even I get tired of standing and watching monkeys poop.
This time, however, something changed my view about animals forever. We were walking by the bird cage behind the zoo tour group. The tour guide was saying, "And these songbirds from New Guinea sing over 2000 times a day. And our blue jay can mimic a hawk's call to scare away other birds." I stopped, listening with my sister. "The penguin doesn't have visible ears, but they can hear very well."
Together with the tour group, we walked past the savanna enclosure. "Did you know that elephants live as long as humans? They are also very intelligent, and have the largest brains of any animal." As I watched, the baby elephant sucked on its trunk like a baby sucking on his thumb.
"Did you see that?" I asked my sister. She nodded with big, happy eyes, sucking on her thumb like the baby elephant. From this day forward, I never say no when she asks to go to the zoo.
