The problem with taking babies on days out is that they very often fall asleep half way through the day. Fortunately, you don’t often have to pay for them to enter whichever attraction you’ve decided to visit, so at least you aren’t paying for them to nap!

Even better, when we visited Manor Wildlife Park, because it was Mothering Sunday weekend, mothers (so, me) also went free. Unlike Tiny, though, I didn’t have a convenient place to have a nap. Tiny has what we call the Palanquin, a baby carrier designed for hiking which M wears, and in which Tiny sleeps. Or squeaks at the animals.

But before riding in the Palanquin, we went to feed the wallabies. Partly because they were the first animals to see and partly because they sold wallaby-feed with the entrance tickets. And because Tiny was wide awake.

Wallabies are basically giant gerbils. Or tiny kangaroos. Either way, they weren’t all that keen on Tiny’s squeaks of happiness whenever one roved into view, so it was a little difficult to feed them. We did manage to hand over all the food in the little packet in the end: we found a group who clearly felt there was safety in numbers. And joeys poking their heads out of pouches.

There were further squeaks when we saw animals previously only seen in Dear Zoo, like the camels, although we only heard snores for the monkeys. But the tigers were greatly appreciated, if only for the fact that they are large cats: next door’s cat tends to run away when he sees Tiny coming.

Visiting a wildlife park or a zoo is more interesting with someone for whom all these sights are new and exciting, and who can’t walk very fast, so you slow down. It’s all too easy to just speed past the camels or the wild horses on the way to a more exciting animal, like the tigers. But toddlers are fascinated even by the beetles on the path, at least until they need that nap.

And then we got to the meerkats, who had their own toddlers, just emerged from the tunnels, so all the adults were on high alert for birds of prey. Their squeaks were less joyful noises. The keepers were planning a destruction of the tunnels, now that the babies were out, to simulate a moving on by the family group. But by then Tiny was asleep and we were coming to the end of the animals anyway, and the clouds were threatening rain, so we called it a day.

And not before time, either. The threatened rain did indeed start as we were driving away.