(Way) Out of Africa
Written By Pete Nelson
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A kid's love of wildlife takes him both far and near.
These otters are really asking for it.
The otter habitat at Disney's Animal Kingdom has two viewing stations, one above the waterline and the other below, but no sooner does my 7-year-old son Jack run to one than the little weasels (pejorative, not taxonomic usage) switch, so Jack ping-pongs back and forth, like a golden retriever who can't stop chasing tennis balls, as I struggle to keep up. Which means his little legs will soon tire and I'll have to carry him back to the bus. But we're here for the animals, and for Jack, so I can't complain.
He squats and tries to take a picture through the window with his disposable camera.
"Come on, buddy," I tell him. "Lots more animals to see."
"Wait," he says, racing to the other station. "I think they're over here . . ."
I can hear them laughing at me. Playful creatures, otters.
My son has been obsessed with animals for as long as we can remember, his crib and later our crib a plush version of Noah's Ark, teeming with stuffed sharks and puppies and dinosaurs. It may be hereditary; I was an animalcentric kid myself. I believe I still hold the Minneapolis public schools' record for overdue book fines due to my obsession with The Big Book of Animals. (Note to self: Did I ever return it? Call Mom and have her look in the attic.) For her part, my wife was convinced as a girl that one day she would have a pet horse living in her house.
Jack's obsession is also something we've encouraged, letting him watch animal shows on TV to his heart's content — except when the lurking crocodile seems as if he might be about to leap out of the stream and bite the head off the wildebeest, and then we reach for the remote. I drew animals on his lunch bags so he'd have something to talk to his friends about at preschool. After a day at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, what he remembered most was feeding the pigeons in Central Park. We've toured zoos big and small, aquariums major and minor, bird-watched and river-hiked and nature-camped, but short of taking an actual African safari or a balloon ride across the Serengeti, this is the best animal experience we can get.
Animal Kingdom Lodge, where we stay, manifests the Disney mission, which has always been to delight, inform, and entertain while parting you from all your dough. It's the former that kids care about, and in that regard, Animal Kingdom Lodge delivers.
Jack's impression upon our arrival is one of silent awe as he walks around bumping into the furniture, gazing at the light fixtures made from warriors' shields, the 16-foot ceremonial mask that we will later learn is called an ijele and was made by the Igbo ethnic group. The lodge is African themed and landscaped, "imagineered" (in Disney parlance) with grass thatching, bamboo, tribal pictographic motifs of ochre and umber and henna red. The cavernous lobby is filled with genuine African animal carvings and artwork, which Jack immediately endeavors to photograph and document for the scrapbook he's putting together.
To be fair, he also takes pictures of the towel racks in our bathroom — but it's clear he thinks this place is special, and that these new cultures he's being exposed to (albeit well removed) are real to him, hands-on and analog and cool.
The main reason to stay at Animal Kingdom Lodge is the beasts that graze in the savannas just beyond the hotel room balconies, Grant's zebras and reticulated giraffes, and things called elands and bongos, and springy Thomson's gazelles and waterbucks. The stations where they're fed by the groundskeepers bring the animals closer than they might come to you in the wild, though you won't be hand-feeding them table scraps: They're kept at a safe distance by discreet electronic fencing. I kept thinking of the time I once stayed at a motel in Ghana overlooking a beautiful pond, where the only thing preventing the crocodiles from walking into my room was their fear of spiders. It made midnight trips to the ice machine exciting, but not in a way you want with bite-size kids around.
The first thing Jack does every morning — don't book a room facing east if you want to sleep in, because your kids are going to throw open the curtains as soon as they wake — is scope the savanna with the binoculars we've brought. He names a zebra "Ladder," a blesbok "Horncorn," and a greater kudu "Dentor." Sometimes the animals are only 30 feet away, and sometimes they're harder to find, which is okay, because then it becomes a game of I Spy. The hotel helps by furnishing guests with checklists to keep track of which animals they've spotted and which animals are born spotted.
The highlight of the trip for Jack is the truck safari. We venture out one afternoon into the savanna, accompanied by animal keeper Liesl King. I'm glad to be temporarily relieved of my pedagogic responsibilities; Jack has peppered me with animal questions, many of which I couldn't answer, since he learned how to talk: "Are there bugs that live underwater?" "Do daddy longlegs make webs?" "Can kangaroos swim?" To which I could only reply, "If kangaroos could swim, they probably wouldn't live in Australia."
When the driver stops next to a giraffe, Jack asks Liesl, "Have you ever seen him pick his nose with his tongue?" (Something he saw on some cable special — I think it was called "Top 10 Most Disgusting Animal Behaviors." You don't want to know what vultures do.)
"Oh sure," Liesl replies. "They do that all the time." Then, as if on cue, the giraffe obliges us with a demonstration. Jack guffaws with delight. When Liesl informs us that a zebra we're observing from 10 feet away is pregnant, Jack asks if she knows who the zebra is going to marry. Liesl explains that boy zebras and girl zebras are kept on separate savannas. Then we all try to change the subject before he asks why, but the questions keep coming.
"There must be a lot of poop here," Jack says at last.
"Yes, there is," Liesl says. It's a comment she hears often from kids, though when I ask if we can take some giraffe poop home with us in a bag, she says no one's ever made that request before. (Heads up, Disney marketing.)
When the safari's over, we lose Jack in a bamboo thicket, where he spies and then chases a gecko, indigenous to Florida but no less exotic to Jack, who squats and squints into the undergrowth.
"I don't think you're going to find him," I say, hoping to hie him along. "They're pretty well camouflaged. We should probably —"
"Wait!" he whispers. "There it is!"
He points.
Sure enough, he's found the gecko, just as he's found worms in garden soil, spiders on windowpanes, frogs in streams, and birds nesting where I would never pause to look. His love of animals drives him to closely scrutinize the earth, and to empathize with and respect and protect life, because you never know where you're going to find it.
He may not grow up to save the earth all by himself, but the planet clearly needs more people who think the way he does, people who are starting as kids, in the savannas of their own backyards.
About the Author: Pete Nelson (here with Jennifer and Jack) lives in South Salem, New York, two miles from a wolf sanctuary.
Tip: Another way to talk to the animals (and give them a hand): a volunteer vacation. Visit charityguide.org/volunteer/vacations.htm.
Wild at Heart: Conservation-minded excursions that feature creatures
Sanctuaries offer the thrill of an up-close animal experience along with lessons about protecting natural habitats, and often your admission fee goes toward caring for the inhabitants. Animal Ark in Reno, Nevada, hosts cheetah runs and wolf howls (animalark.org). At Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, stay in the Tree House Bungalow and wake to the rumblings of big cats ( turpentinecreek.org). Best Friends Animal Society in Kanab, Utah, in the Golden Circle of parks that includes the Grand Canyon, is the country's largest domesticated-animal sanctuary. They welcome volunteers ages 6 and up, who can help with dogs, cats, bunnies, and more ( bestfriends.org). For other options, visit greenpeople.org/sanctuary.htm.
