Expanding gender, one small conversation at a time

[redbird]

cattitude and I went to the Bronx Zoo today. I walked up to the edge of the lion enclosure to watch them, and a small boy who was standing in front of me looked at me and said "Why do you have a beard?" I said "Because I grew it, the same as anyone else." Then he asked "Why are you a girl?" and I said "You'd have to ask my parents, they made me one." At that point he said something about the gazelles in the area behind the lions, and we both focused on the big cats.

A more accurate answer to the first question would have been "because I'm lazy": shaving is a nuisance and leads to stubble and itching (sometimes itchiness by the end of the same day), and any more permanent hair removal would require me to be sure I wanted it and set aside time (as well as money). But I suspect that was even further from what he was thinking, which probably was in the area of "I thought you couldn't do that."

It was a good day for the zoo in other ways: cool (call it 70F, 21C) and overcast, so a lot of animals were active. The lions were moving around, even chasing each other a bit, as were the gazelles behind them. We spent a while watching the hyraxes in the baboon area. At first they were still and very hard to see: they're almost exactly the color of the rocks. But some of them moved around, and both Cattitude and a woman who was just standing and watching pointed some of them out to me. That was fun; I like hyraxes, in a somewhat intellectual way. (Small, obscure mammals whose closest relatives are elephants.)

We also had fun with snow leopards (again, quite a bit more active than usual) and the white-naped cranes. The young crane looks a lot more like his parents than he did on our last visit: brownish head, and his body feathers are graying, but still a little browner than his parents. Their pond is covered with duckweed, which made a nice contrast.

There were a lot of chipmunks just running around (the zoo is full of them, but we rarely see them, because they tend to stay under cover), and cardinals singing. We also watched the giraffes and ostriches for a bit. Skipped the tigers because I was tired by then. (I decided against going to hang out with elisem and other folks in Greenwich Village, because by the time we got back to Inwood I was tired, and not at all sure I had the energy to go downtown, enjoy hanging out, and get home again. Alas.)

Comments

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

We got three new lion cubs this week -- half-siblings and cousins from the two-week-older four cubs -- and they're doing very well.

[avram]

But I suspect that was even further from what he was thinking, which probably was in the area of "I thought you couldn't do that."

Or possibly "Hey, no fair! I can't do that!"

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

"Because I grew it" is an excellent answer.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

He seems to have been satisfied by your answers. I count anytime that one can answer a kid's question honestly and it satisfies the kid as a Big Win!