Monday, May 05, 2008

Want a snack, check your weapons at the door

The field trip permission slip for my youngest boldly announced that we were once again going to be making the trek to the city to take in the fine sites and living splendor of the always wonderful Oklahoma City Zoo.

Strange how I now know this zoo better than I have ever known the venerable zoo of my youth, the LA Zoo, but that's what having two kidkins of the zoo visiting age will do to even the most hard boiled Los Angeleno native.

Still, after all my dozen or so trips around the displays, into the bathrooms, in-and-out the playgrounds, and round and round the Endangered Species Merry-Go-Round, I had never come across this sign, or any others like it at the zoo...


As the girl's contentedly consumed their four buck containers of Dippin' Dots which we purchased at the cafe where this sign was posted, I did some hard core brain musing about just what this sign was about.

Are the zoo staff normally armed against invading field-trippin' toddlers bent on destruction of the native animal habitats?

Do they open up the zoo once a year to big game hunters in an effort to save on their animal kibble budget by periodically thinning the herd? And if so, why aren't they allowed to partake of dippin' dots and Dr. Pepper slushies?

Did zoo officials post these signs prematurely, in anticipation of this legislation being passed into law and eventually spreading its influence onto state owned amusement venues?

Good thing I left my Sig Sauer in the car.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The law seems crazy. I am an honorably discharged veteran and a student. If an incident like the Virginia Tech shootings were to happen on an Oklahoma campus I as well as other military students have the training and means to put an end to it. You trust the military to fight foreign wars but you don't trust us to prevent campus shootings?

Anonymous said...

OK being a concealed-carry state, there are tons of places with "no firearms" signs. I found it particularly amusing that you had to tell people not to pack heat at the library ... until a young woman followed me all around the building one afternoon last summer, invading every quiet nook I found with her incessant pacing and relentless (LOUD) yapping on a cell phone, and I suddenly understood why a person might want to bring a gun to the library, and why that might be a dangerous idea....