News and event information for Williams Lake, BC - as it happens.

By LeRae Haynes

When I saw the news footage about the children who were infected by E-Coli bacteria at the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) petting zoo in Vancouver, I probably had a similar reaction to a lot of other people—dismay that something as innocent as a petting zoo could pose such serious health hazard to kids. 

And if I had tried to predict what petting zoo health hazards might have been, I certainly wouldn’t have picked bacteria. I would have guessed a hazard like being head-butted by a greedy little goat the size of a basketball, for example, or being flung into the parking lot by a small assertive deer who thought you were taking entirely too long opening the little bag to dispense the food pellets. 

When my kids were little I took them to visit extended family in San Diego. My oldest daughter was four-and-a-half, my middle son a sturdy three and my youngest was 18 months. They were the perfect age for a petting zoo, and since they were raised in rural BC, were familiar with things like goats, sheep and deer. 

It was crowded and noisy and fun. We plunked coins into the gumball machine dispensers and filled little bags with food pellets. All the animals were about knee-high on me: perfect eye level for children. My kids petted and giggled in delight, while I handed out pellets and kept a close eye on my youngest, so that he wouldn’t get knocked over by accident. 

At one point I had the toddler on my hip while handing out food to a distinctly overfed dwarf deer, and felt a tug on my skirt. When you have three little kids, a tug on your skirt, or your pant leg, or your anklebone, is nothing unusual, so it took a couple more sharp yanks before I turned around to see who needed what. 

I was mortified to see that a little brown goat with deceptively gentle eyes and long eyelashes had half my skirt in his mouth and was pulling for all he was worth to get the rest. I didn’t want to hurt the little duffer, so I gave a firm pull on the fabric and informed him sternly that, not only was this skirt not his to begin with, it wasn’t good for him and would likely disrupt his digestive routines. 

He planted his tiny, evil shiny hooves, lowered his head and defiantly gulped down another mouthful of skirt. Fuelled by equal shares of panic, acute embarrassment and fury, I handed the toddler off to his grandmother, gripped a handful of the hotly disputed garment with both hands, leaned back and gave a mighty yank. 

The little goat retched up what was left of the lower left quadrant of skirt, and watched, gagging and drooling while I was catapulted backwards into a garbage can with a deafening crash. Quite a crowd of amused bystanders had gathered by then, watching the skirt-joust with great interest. I managed to clamber off the dented, overturned trash can, shake the sawdust and debris off my tattered, stained skirt, collect my children and limp out of the petting zoo. 

E-Coli hazard, indeed. I probably had enough intestinal goat bacteria on my garments to infect a small European country, not to mention the fact that my self-esteem count was in negative numbers for about a month. 

Too bad about the bacteria at the PNE petting zoo. For a lot of kids, that may be their only taste of getting up close and personal with small animals with hooves. Closing petting zoos may also signal the end of an era where free entertainment was as simple as a distracted young mother and a goat with a taste for fashion.

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