Shoeless Joe

ONE of the many things we did on our wonderful vacation to Oregon was to visit the beautiful Oregon Zoo with our fabulous hosts Uncle Brian, Aunt Sarah, McKay, and Ellery. We had a great time (so great in fact, that the kids didn't even hesitate when I asked them to do "jazz hands" for this picture.).

We enjoyed the bear exhibit, which coincidentally, was the temporary home for the bears from our own Utah Hogle Zoo. We think they were happy to see some familiar faces and also don't know how they will go back to their boring Hogle Zoo home after living in this lush environment.

We feasted on elephant ears, which were delicious, and thoroughly enjoyed our day until "the shoe incident." We were all admiring the zebras and about to move on the the next animal when Brandon noticed a random little shoe that had fallen into the zebra home. We all laughed and felt sorry for the poor kid who only had one shoe at the zoo. We all decided that not having a shoe at the zoo was quite possibly the grossest thing ever. We then moved on to the giraffe enclosure. After we looked at the elegant giraffes we were ready to move on when Ethan came running up crying that he had dropped his shoe. We assumed he was joking; what a funny kid. Nope, no joke. Ethan had actually dropped his shoe in the giraffe cage RIGHT after we had talked about and laughed about the poor kid who had done it at the zebra cage. We could see the lonely little flip flop way down on the ground, but there was absolutely no way to retrieve it.

Ethan was beside himself.

The rest of us were disgusted!

There was nothing we could do. He kept begging us to get the "zoo keeper", who in Ethan's mind could fix anything at the zoo. We never found a zoo keeper and our poor little Eto walked all over the rest on the zoo with only one shoe. GROSSEST THING EVER! One of the funniest things was one time I saw him trying to hop on one foot. Unfortunately, he was hopping on the shoeless foot while holding his lone flip flop leg up in the air. Hopefully, some other family will get a good laugh when they see that little flip flop at the bottom of the giraffe cage, and feel sorry for the poor boy who had to walk around the zoo with only one shoe!