A keeper taking a load of uneaten, urine-soaked hay out of an exhibit set the wheelbarrow down and turned to close the gate. A teenage boy reached over to grab a handful of hay to toss in to the animals. The keeper could see what the boy was doing out of the comer of his eye, and deliberately took his time in closing the gate.

When he turned back to the wheelbarrow, the boy was, of course, acting innocent. As he went by with the wheelbarrow, the keeper turned to the boy and remarked politely, “Oh, by the way, you might want to wash your hands when you’re done. They’ve been peeing on this stuff all night.”
As the keeper’s words sank in, a look of disgust spread across the boy’s face and he began wiping his hands on his pants.

Visitor in giraffe building to keeper: “How old is that baby giraffe?”

“Well, he’ll be a year old in about a month.”

“Oh. And how old is it now?”

A father was going down the row of cages, diligently reading each sign to his young son. After a while the boy looked up with a puzzled expression on his face and asked, “But how did they know what they were called?”

A young boy, running ahead of his family, asked the keeper what animals were in the large, gunite exhibit the keeper was hosing. Picking the simplest of his standard answers, the keeper told him that they were mountain goats.

When the boy’s family caught up with him he turned excitedly to his mother and said, “Look mom, mountain goats.” His mother, reading the sign on the fence, replied, “No, they’re Siberian ibex.” This went back and forth several times, with the boy insisting that they were mountain goats, and the mother insisting on a literal interpretation of the sign. Finally in exasperation, the mother turned to the boy and said, “How do you know they’re mountain goats?” The boy pointed at the keeper and said, ‘‘He told me!” His mother had no reply.