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“Daddy!” Theo hopped on my chest and woke me up like he did most mornings. His toothy grin was better than coffee for cheering me up first thing in the morning. Anna and I were morning people before, but our kids seemed to take that to new extremes.
Emilia was right behind him, climbing into our bed and situating herself between Anna and me.The baby stirred in the crib.
“Cici is up!” Emilia said, wiggling between us. “Cici, come lay with us, pweese?”
Cecilia, otherwise known as Cici by Emilia, let out a soft cry, and Anna, who didn’t have a hyper child sitting on her chest, climbed from the bed and picked up our three-month-old daughter.
Anna pulled down her top and started feeding our youngest, our normal morning routine around these parts. In the distance, our roosters crowed, telling everyone at the little sanctuary that it was time to get up.
“I feed the emus today, Daddy?” Theo asked with wide eyes.
Anna raised an eyebrow and waited for me to respond.
“Why don’t you feed Leonardo instead.”
Leonardo DiCapybara was our newest resident at the sanctuary, and one of the gentlest we had. We’d rescued him from a family who thought owning a capybara would be no different than owning a guinea pig, putting the big guy in a cage away from water and everything he needed to be happy - including other capybaras, since they were critters that did better in family groups. We had two already, so Leo fit right in with our bunch and quickly became some of my favorite animals on the entire property.
Tied with Al and the other alpacas and the goats, of course.
“I wanna feed Birdtha,” Theo said, sticking his lower lip out and crossing his tiny arms across his chest.
“One day, little man. Even your dear old dad is no match for Birdtha,” I said, ruffling his hair, which was blonde like his mom’s. “You can feed Leo some carrots, though. I’m sure he’d really like that.”
“Eww, who likes carrots?” Emilia said from beside us, scrunching up her adorable little face.
“Good thing the animals love carrots, means less of them for you, right?” I teased my oldest daughter.
Anna finished feeding the baby, and it was about time to get our day started. Anna was on a limited schedule, still recovering from the birth of the baby and taking it easy, but she usually took a walk around the sanctuary and checked in on the animals and the staff we’d hired to help us out. She was no longer the only vet on staff here. We had two others, which made it a lot easier not just while she was pregnant, but in general. It meant we weren’t on call 24/7 in case of an emergency.
We had grown a lot over the years - a lot larger than even I had imagined in such a short amount of time. We had goats, alpaca, emus, and chickens like before, when I had my own little farm. We had the three kangaroos from the Austin sanctuary. Plus, now we had three capybaras and were open to getting even more. In addition to all of that, we had a serval, one of the most exotic animals in our little sanctuary and one of Anna’s favorites. Severus the Serval came to us when someone thought exotic cats could be domesticated. He wasn’t aggressive in the slightest, but he was still very much a wild animal and did a lot of damage to their home before they finally understood that maybe fifty pounds is just a bit too much cat for them.
I had to check in with some contacts I’d reached out to. We were talking to another reserve about possibly getting a zebra or two. Yet another sanctuary was closing. Times were tough, but we were thriving in the middle of Utah. We’d opened to guests and the community welcomed us with open arms, and animal lovers came from all over the state and the neighboring ones to see our unique critters.
I got Emilia and Theo dressed while Anna put Cici in a sling around her body, cradling our youngest to her chest for our daily walk and feedings. We had staff to feed most of the critters, but it brought us joy to interact with our animals and to have our kids with us, helping, so we reserved some tasks for us. Emilia was really fond of feeding the chickens and the turkeys. She would gobble gobble at them, and they’d gobble right back, always making her giggle in delight.
Theo was fascinated with the emus, but even our gentler Emmanuel was not to be trusted with the little guy yet. Emus were dangerous birds, but our son seemed to have an interest in the more dangerous critters. Thankfully, we didn’t have anything too dangerous, and that was never our plan. We weren’t looking to bring in tigers or lions or bears. Those animals might be great for tourists, but we weren’t cut out for that. We wanted to keep it small, family-friendly, and safe for the community as well as the animals. It was never about getting rich or impressing people with dangerous predators, it was about caring for the animals and letting our children be raised around them, having a helping hand around the premises where possible.
Anna’s smile was always so big when she was out there, in her zone, working with the animals. Even with a baby strapped to her chest, she didn’t let it stop her from doing what she loved. She was an amazing mother and an amazing vet.
My phone buzzed as the kids were feeding the chickens.
“Yes!” I said out loud.
“What is it?” Anna asked.
“The zebras! We got them! I’ll tell Hank to start prepping the area we reserved for them. They’ll be here next month.”
“Zebras?” both little ones shouted at the same time. “We’re getting zebras!”
“Yes, isn’t that exciting?”
“I’m gonna get a saddle and ride one,” Theo said.
We laughed. “I’m afraid you can’t ride them, Theo.”
“Why not?”
I looked at Anna, who was more likely to have the answers to that. Anna just laughed. “We’ll get you a horse one day, when you’re older.”
