The Denver Zoo is a great place and has nice exhibits along with a wide variety of denizens. As most summer weekends, it gets really crowded and the amount of sprogs and fat oblivious people is almost unbearable.
Kids will be kids, but parents simply don’t care about the results of the kid’s actions and don’t seem to feel any responsibility for them. If a kid breaks something or offends someone or gets in my way, its ok for the parents, they see it as ‘just how kids are’.
When that crosses the line and endangers animals being held in a zoo, a sanctuary, that isn’t ok. Today we saw an ignorant kid swinging a necklace with a piece of metal around, dangling it in the mongoose exhibit. Of course the kid drops it, a dozen mongooses converge and run off with it, happy as can be. The parents just stand there watching, oblivious to the fact that the item may be dangerous to the animals. They don’t scold the kid, don’t think to notify zoo employees or do anything other than watch the animals. I told them to notify someone immediately, but at that point they should have been banned from the zoo for life.
Further along, asian family is watching their little kid chase two peacocks around. The kid is poking at the birds, stepping on the dragging tail feathers and scaring them. The dad happily takes more and more video, the mom waves her hat trying to get the peacocks to look away from the threatening kid and at the video camera. People look on, not realizing the trauma it causes the birds. These people need to stay away from zoos the rest of their lives.