Where the Elephant Lives

This week at school, Miss E. can earn bonus points if she creates a diorama of an animal habitat. She has chosen the home of an elephant. When I asked her how she would decorate the diorama, a.k.a., shoe box, she said "I'll use some hay for the bottom and bars for the fence."

Sigh. This is why I have such mixed emotions about the zoo.

You'll be glad to know, though, that after some discussion and "research" of a true elephant habitat, Babar will have an African savanna-type homestead, rather than that of the Louisville Zoological Gardens.

This reminded me of the old commercial advertising Fisher-Price's "See and Say," the toy where you pull the string, it lands on a photo of a certain animal, then mimics that animal's sound. The commercial urged parents of city kids to buy the toy, panning to a little boy at an urban park petting zoo waving to a sheep and saying, "Hi, doggie!"

I still laugh thinking about it.
Image from The New York Times