April 26, 2007
The damned and the lost
Ronnie took Jacob to the zoo yesterday so that I could slave away on my work while the rest of the nation had a public holiday.
Jacob has become very independent of late and one-way-or-another wandered off from the lakeside Bistro area to visit the seals by himself. We won't go into why or how it is even possible for this to happen; cliched phrases such as 'looked away just for a moment', 'so quick' and 'you just CAN'T do that' have been bandied about.
I am still suprised at just how little sympathy I feel for Ron after he went through what must have been the most terrifying ten minutes of his life. I don't even feel guilty about pointing out that he needn't have bothered coming home if Jacob hadn't been found. I may have even suggested that if that had been the case he would be better off getting straight out on the ring-road to the airport and onto the next flight back to the Netherlands. Isn't that horrible? I seem to have come over all mother-tigerish.
Anyway, before this virtual-deportation became a reality, Ron told a zoo employee Jacob was missing and within seconds it had been walkie-talkied to all employees and Ron had been escorted to the reception area to wait. Jacob was found soon afterwards, standing crying near the platypus house, by a keeper who recognised his decription, (was it the Olive Grove skull-and-cross-bones t-shirt?) gave him a biscuit and stayed with him until Ron arrived.
Lately Jacob's response to being told that he can't do something or that he might have to wait is, "Well, I can do it by myself." I'm just hoping that maybe he will be a little more cautious about rushing off to prove it in future. And that his father won't be telling me to 'Relax!' quite so often. Poor man.
Posted by Faith