Why My Kids Prefer an Old Abandoned Zoo

If I ask my boys what they want to do, 9 times out of 10 they will choose a visit to The Old Los Angeles Zoo.  For those of you who haven’t yet discovered it, the Old Zoo is where the LA Zoo used to be located.  Sometime in the 60’s all of the animals were removed and brought to their current home about 2 miles away.  What’s left is a series of empty animal enclosures, cages, a deserted building and a bunch of hiking trails.  Despite its state of ill repair, urine smell in some places and more broken glass than a mom ever wants to see, this place is boy heaven.  The past few days my two youngest have been fighting nonstop and I knew the only way to remedy this was to get them out of the house for the afternoon.  Of course they picked the Old Zoo.  Upon our arrival and after the youngest confirmed with me that there were indeed no coyotes lurking in the bushes (there was one roaming around the last time we were there) we headed for the Zoo.  As we passed the bathroom, I made sure no one had to use it and continued up the hill toward some cages to play in.  After hiking for about 5 minutes, Nick (5) informed me that he now had to poop, of course he did.  Jack (almost 3) insisted he didn’t have to go.  So after hitting the bathroom we walked back up the hill.  Only to get about 10 minutes higher up the hill and discover that indeed, Jack had to poop now.  Another bathroom trip and we got to explore some cages.  The kids pretended they were monkeys, which doesn’t take any imagination at all.  After having a snack and collecting more sticks to add to their gigantic stick collection (carefully hidden from the gardener behind the bushes in the front yard) we were done.  The kids had fun, my house was spared an afternoon under siege, and we were two hours closer to bedtime.