Stench, Flies and Animal Crackers.

One of the benefits to being the oldest kid in the family is that you got to do everything first. You're the first one to be allowed to cross the street by yourself, you're the first one to be allowed to ride your bike to the drugstore, you're the first one allowed to stay out past dark, or take the car to the prom. One of the drawbacks, of course, is that all your "firsts" are tempered by the completely unfair notion that if you can do something, so can your younger brother, as long as he is accompanied by you. ("Watch your brother" and "Take your brother with you" become phrases you learn to hate hearing.)

Obviously this loophole pisses you off, since he is more than 2 years younger than you are, and if there were any justice in the universe, he would have to wait exactly two years and 21 days to do those same things regardless of whether you were alive or dead. Also, the phase "I thought I told you to watch your brother!" was probably used more often than it should have been, and was a testament to my short attention span and relative ambivalence about whether my brothers continued to exist on this plane.

One of the other dubious benefits, however, was being able to "watch your brothers" as they still had fun doing things that no longer interested you all that much. You realized that you were growing up, and that made you feel a little bit superior. [Warning: Santa Claus Spoiler Alert] Do you remember when you found out that Santa wasn't real, and after you got over your enormous sense of parental betrayal, you realized that you were now on the inside? You were the spy who came in from the cold, the double-agent, feeding information to both sides, playing the cool confidant, the intrepid informant, the master of misdirection. It was sometimes fun, sometimes a drag, but always interesting to watch as your younger brothers marveled over the reindeer hoof prints, the plate of cookie crumbs and the empty glass of milk, or the gnawed carrots and clumps of fur left behind by the Easter Bunny who, somewhere along the line, apparently contracted a really bad case of mange.

Since my mother was a stay-at-home mom, (or a "housewife" as they called them way back when) sometimes in the summer she would plan field trips just to keep us occupied. Mostly to maintain her own sanity, I think. When she'd had enough of our whining and fighting and complaining that there was nothing to do, she'd simply pack us all into the car and head out. One of the places she took us to was called The Catskill Game Farm.

If you grew up anywhere in New York, you probably have some great memories of this place. It was founded in 1933 by Roland Lindemann and closed for good in 2006. Back in the early seventies, it was still 50% regular zoo, 50% petting zoo, and 100% tourist trap, and as far as I know, that format never changed.

We went there quite a few times over the years, but only one of our trips really sticks out in my mind, mostly because it was an unmitigated disaster. We weren't bad kids, exactly, but let me just say that if leashes wouldn't have garnered my mother some dirty looks, they would not have been an especially bad idea.

At the time of this particular trip, I was probably about six years old, The Snitch was four and Houdini was two. As a six-year-old, I was mildly interested in seeing the lions and elephants, but it was the thought of seeing giant snakes and lizards that really floated my boat at the time. The Catskill Game Farm had a "Reptile House" which was sort of dark and cool inside, and had all sorts of creepy crawly things that my mother wanted no part of. She would go in with us, but was constantly looking over her shoulder as if she expected to be strangled by a boa constrictor that had escaped from its cage. In fact, I remember her seeing an empty cage that was probably being cleaned or something, and the next thing I know I was blinking in the bright sunlight, rubbing my arm and wondering how the hell I got outside. That's how fast we left the Reptile House. I think she really enjoyed watching us interact with the animals, and while I initially thought feeding and petting the animals would be a drag, it actually turned out to be kind of fun, mostly because of the story I'm about to tell you.

First, let me set the stage -- I have always had a sensitive nose, and a giant park full of animals in the heat and humidity of a mid-summer day in New York is not an olfactory experience you will soon forget. I know most of you are probably picturing a barn smell in your minds right now, but keep in mind that this place didn't just house mammals -- you had reptiles and birds to deal with too, and each of them had their own unique and potent reek. In other words, if you've never smelled fresh Ostrich shit baking in the sun, your imagination will be hard-pressed to do the stank of this place justice.

The first thing you do when you walk in is buy the crackers to hand feed the animals. My mother walked us over to the window and bought each of us a stack of crackers that I assume were made of processed grains and grass and things, because they were a greenish-brown color and smelled a little like rabbit food. She handed me my stack, handed The Snitch his, and tucked Houdini's into her purse. Thus armed, we ventured into the park, the three of us in tow behind my mother.

In addition to having animals in pens (the "zoo" part), they also had animals that just sort of wandered around (the "petting" part). What they failed to mention in the commercials was the "pooping" part. The animals that were just roaming around -- the deer, goats and antelope-looking things -- basically just let loose wherever they were standing, so it was inevitable that the first thing I did was step in a big pile of animal crap. I am not sure exactly what brand it was, I only know that it stunk. It was embedded deeply into the soles of my Converse All-Stars, and the smell of it made me want to puke. We sat down on a bench while my mother looked around for a stick to clean my shoe.

About 50 feet away, we could see a group of half-grown, domesticated deer surrounding some other little kid hapless enough to have flashed his crackers, and they were busy tearing him apart like a pack of hungry wolves. His arms were in the air, crackers in each fist, and he must have had some extras in his pockets because they were basically undressing him where he stood. He wasn't tall enough to prevent them from taking his crackers, and he had a panicked look on his face like he thought he was going to die. His mother was just laughing and taking pictures. I don't think my mother noticed that this was happening, but The Snitch and Houdini sure noticed, and they didn't look too sure about it.

After my shoe was sort of clean, my mother stood us in a row and gave us the ground rules -- one quarter of a cracker at a time, always place the cracker flat on your palm and let the animal take it so you don't get your fingers bitten, and crackers were expensive so we would only get one more batch each and that would be it. Houdini was pretty small yet, so she stayed with him, planning to dole out his small pieces of cracker as he requested them. She pointed her finger at me and said, "Johnny, you keep an eye on your brother." Then she added the words I hated to hear more than anything in my young life.

"And hold his hand so you don't get separated."

"But Mom!" I whined, "I hate ---"

"Don't you 'But Mom' me," she said. "You hold his hand or we're not going any farther."

I sighed, and grabbed one of his hands. Maybe a little harder than I needed to, but that wasn't my fault.

Suddenly, she noticed something. "Snitch, where are you crackers? How could you possibly lose them already? Did you leave them somewhere?"

"No," he replied.

"Did you give them to an animal?" she asked.

"No," he replied again.

"Well then, what happened to them?" she asked, exasperated.

"I ate them," he said, looking down at his feet.

My mother acted like he had swallowed a cup of Drano.

"You ATE them? YOU ATE THEM? she screamed, getting more agitated by the second. She grabbed him and told him to open his mouth. He did so, and she asked, "You ate ALL of them? What in God's name were you thinking?"

"I didn't know they were for the animals," he said. "I thought they were a snack."

She immediately tracked down someone on the staff, and frantically explained that her kid had just eaten a big stack of the animal crackers. He laughed and said it happens all the time, and not to worry about it. That seemed to calm her down. She walked us back to the cracker place, fished some more money out of her purse, and another stack appeared.

"Don't eat them, " she warned.

"I won't," he replied. "They didn't taste very good, anyway."

[As an aside, here's something you have to know about my brother The Snitch. He was a vacuum cleaner for food ever since he was born. To this day, I think the reason I eat so fast is because growing up, we all had to try to get our share before The Snitch got to it, otherwise there would be nothing left. That went for snacks, too. If you wanted peanut butter and jelly, or potato chips, or even a chocolate chip cookie, you would have to hide them, otherwise there'd be none left when you went to get one. My mother was constantly finding food stashed all over the place. One trick we used for a while, at least until he got wise to it, was to wrap whatever it was we wanted to hide in tin foil, and then tape a little piece of paper on it that said "Dog." My mother always used to save scraps for the dog, and most of the time they would end up in the fridge or freezer with a little tag on them so my father would know he wasn't supposed to eat it. My father would have (and had) eaten moldy meat and not realized it, so anything that was even remotely suspect got flagged with the dog tag. The hardest part was learning how to write "Dog" in my mother's handwriting, but luckily it was a short word so it didn't take long to master. So anyway, I just wanted to explain why he would decide crackers that didn't taste very good were something he should wolf down on the spot.]

With that, we walked toward our first batch of animals, a group of about 5 or 6 spotted fawns. They were small enough so we wouldn't get knocked over, but still -- we were instantly mobbed, and it was pretty fun getting poked and prodded and licked by a whole group of fawns at the same time. (I know that sounds dirty, but it isn't.) Nobody got bitten, although the baby deer were even trying to poke their heads into my mother's purse in the hopes of stealing more crackers.

The Snitch wanted to go see the elephants, so we headed over to the elephant pen. The elephants were in the process of getting hosed down because it was hotter than hell, and there was a river of smelly water running out from under the fence. It looked like they used something akin to a fire hose to douse them, because it seemed to be much more water than what you would get out of a normal faucet. The elephants were pretty impressive and while my mother, The Snitch and I were watching them move around in their slow, yet graceful way, my brother Houdini managed to find one of the water spigots attached to a fence post and turn it on. A blast of water hit him full-force in the chest. He was so surprised he fell right on his butt and started crying, even as the water continued to shoot out of the faucet at about 1600 psi. My mother quickly turned the faucet off, but by that time he was soaked from head to toe, sitting in filthy elephant runoff, and had flies buzzing around him. As you can imagine, my mother was very pleased.

[That was the other thing I forgot to mention. The incredible number of flies all over everything. When you have 1,000 acres of animals, that are, literally, full of shit, that's a lot of manure to deal with. When you figure the average-sized pile of deer crap holds about 300 flies (yes, I've done studies) you can imagine what the fly situation at this place was like. I don't doubt that they were hosing that place down with DDT at night, but it was still almost unbearable. ]

She stood him up, got him to stop crying, brushed the mud off him as best she could, and soldiered on. I don't remember much else about our visit -- I remember the crocodiles, and I remember seeing the ostriches and the ant-eaters, but I couldn't tell you what else was there. I remember eating lunch and constantly trying to keep the flies off my food, but as far as other animals go, my memory isn't the best. Typical zoo-type stuff.

Mostly, I remember the Llamas.

We went to the Llama pen and my mother still had the last of Houdini's crackers in her purse. For some reason, she always thought Llamas were fascinating, and so she wanted to feed one. She walked up to the pen and held out a cracker. The llama took one look at her, and something very bad happened. If you know about Llamas, you know they spit. But saying "llamas spit" is like saying "Katrina caused a little flooding." The Llama put his ears back and did this right in my mother's face:



She was so shocked she just stood there for a second, holding out her cracker, covered from head to waist in dripping green half-digested slime that used to be hay and crackers. She dry-heaved a few times, and I thought she was going to lose it, but she managed to hold herself together. And dear god, the stench. She wiped the slime away from her eyes and mouth, and then took a tissue from her purse and cleaned herself up as best she could, and it was right about then that The Snitch shot his breakfast crackers and his lunch all over the place.

She was done. Defeated. Beat down. We had been there for maybe a total of 4 hours, and we wanted to go home. We were shit-covered, slime-covered, muddy, sick and tired. We hoofed it back to the car and piled in. It was a very quiet and not particularly pleasant ride home.

I think the llama incident is the only reason I even remember that particular visit. We went back a few more times over the years, although those trips were less eventful, and I only have the vaguest memories of them.

We stayed pretty far away from the llama pen, though, so that could be why.

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