P-p-p-pick up a penguin

Primrose the penguin has been added to my daughter's menagerie of toy animals following our trip to the zoo to mark her first birthday.

Primrose is a glove puppet penguin we liberated from the gift shop. (I've just read that sentence back and by liberated, I do not mean stolen – pennies were exchanged with the

shop keeper.)

My daughter fell head over heels in love with the real life penguins at the zoo and so no other toy seemed a more fitting memento of the day.

Off we set in the car yesterday morning, me and my husband singing at the tops of our voices “Daddy's taking us to the zoo tomorrow” but substituting tomorrow for today of course.

I had told my daughter all about the amazing animals we were going to see – the lions, the giraffes, the rhinos. If I was a betting person I wouldn't have put any money on my daughter favouring the penguins the best, but she never fails to surprise me.

I lifted her out of her pushchair and let her peer over the side of the penguin enclosure and she started to flap her little hands and break into her 'oooh, oooh, oooh' cry. She couldn't take her eyes off the little dinner jacketed bird walking around the perimeter of the enclosure just a few feet below us, that was until she saw one of the other penguins splosh into the water and start to swim around. Who are these crazy critters, she must have been thinking that not only wobble from

side to side like a Weeble but can swim as well?

All the animals we saw were rated on the oooh, oooh, oooh scale. (oooh – pronounced to rhyme with blue.)

The run down of the day is as follows:

Storks – Oooh, oooh, with a reach of a hand and an attempt to break free of the straps of her pushchair to get a better look.

Snowy Owl – Oooh, oooh, followed by an intake of breath like she was hyper-ventilating.

Emu – Oooh

Zebra – Nothing

Monkeys – puzzled look. No ooohs.

Rhinos – nothing

Pigeon – Oooh, oooh, oooh. (As an aside – this pigeon was nothing to do with the zoo. It had dropped by to scavenge for dropped sandwich crumbs.)

Ostrich – an uncertain oooh.

Camels – what was that, a little oooh, no my mistake, nothing.

Other children – oooh, oooh, oooh.

Dog – oooh, oooh, oooh, hands waving, straining at the pushchair straps. (Again, the dog was nothing to do with the zoo. A visitor's dog.)

Pigs – Oooh, oooh, eyes and mouth open wide in amazement. Even when walking away, straining to look back at them, hands outstretched.

Donkey – Oooh, oooh, trying to break out of my arms and over the fence to be with the donkeys.

Unicorn – only joking

Bumble bee – mesmerised, too busy for ooohs. (Yet again, bumble bee not really anything to do with the zoo, just visiting the zoo's flowers.)

Goats – Slight oooh when one tried to climb a tree.

Reindeer – ditto/see above.

Big fat pot-bellied pig – Too busy laughing at the big fat pot-bellied pig scratching its bottom against a rock to oooh.

Miscellaneous (including leaves, grass, twigs and shadows) – mega oooh.

Penguins – Oooh, oooh, oooh, oooh, oooh, oooh, oooh, oooh, oooh - times affinity.