Who: Romana and Severus Snape When: Weekend, May 18 Where: Zoo! What: Family outing Rating/Warnings: Low/None Status: Complete!
Severus was excited to take his two favorite women out for a little field trip. He purchased the tickets ahead of time, so they didn’t have to wait in line when they made it to the zoo. There was a children’s area in the back, but he was fairly certain that once they reached it, Daisy would be gone, wanting to play on the jungle gym equipment and not look at any more animals. So he thought maybe they could take their time wandering around the enclosures before heading back to the play area.
He said as much. “Shall we see the lions first?”
It was probably a good idea to see the animals first instead of going right to the playground. Romana was excited, she hadn’t been to the zoo in forever. She wanted to see the look on Daisy’s face when she saw all of those animals that she hadn’t seen before. Or at least didn’t remember seeing them. Not to mention that it was nice out and she was glad not to be behind a desk.
“Lions are good. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Then we should see the elephants and giraffes.” If that was okay with them anyway.
They’d been together once before, hadn’t they? When Daisy was really little? Severus couldn’t really remember. It felt like so much of Daisy’s first year of life was a blur. Lots of late night feedings and lack of sleep made his memory a bit faulty. No matter. “Absolutely. You like the giraffes, don’t you Daisy? You’ve seen pictures in your Zoo book.”
Daisy was bouncing, her dark hair swaying as she moved giddily between her parents. “Long necks! Like George!”
Their little girl was just growing up so fast, it was hard to keep track of all the things that they’d done together. Daisy could remember this part better, she hoped. “Giraffes just like George. I bet they have lots here.” She was glad that she had a frame of reference. Too many days in front of the television.
They came up to the lion pen and so Romana scooped her up to put her up on the little ledge so that she could get higher up and see them. They were all lying down, getting out of the sun a bit. “See? Look how big they are!”
“They sure do sleep a lot.” Severus said, looking out over the lions sunning themselves. This Zoo had quite a few of them, which was refreshing to see. “I hope that they all get along.” He added. It would be terrible to have fighting lions on their hands.
“I guess when you’re not actively hunting down gazelle and other animals, there isn’t much to do but lie around and take a bath.” Romana said with a smile. “I’m sure they make sure of that. I can’t see them having fighting lions around.”
“I read somewhere that they have the big cats--and possibly other zoo animals, I’m not sure, the article focused on the tigers at one particular zoo--on hormones to control their...” he glanced down at Daisy who was staring at the lions in the enclosure, “urges. To make sure that they can control the breeding. I suppose that probably also keeps them calm.”
“Oh yeah? Hm. That’s interesting. I guess that’s a good idea.” She didn’t know much about breeding in large cats though. She read the plaque by the cage and hm’d. “Apparently there are such things as ligers.. who knew?”
“Oh, that’s right.” Severus said.
“Mommy, what’s a Liger?” Daisy asked. She’d actually been listening to them talk, though how much of the information sunk in was anybody’s guess.
Romana hm’d a bit. “It’s a combination of a tiger and a lion. That means it’s daddy was a lion and it’s mommy was a tiger. And if I remember correctly, they also have something called tiglons, which means it’s daddy was a tiger and it’s mommy was a lion.” Apparently she’d been watching a lot of nature documentaries.
Severus was impressed with the Liger and Tiglon knowledge. He raised his eyebrows as his wife explained, then gave a grin to the two best women in the world. “Your Mommy is so smart,” he said to Daisy.
“I wanna be a Tiger when I grow up!” Daisy said. “Daddy... um, Excuse me, Daddy... can we play Tigers? Mommy? Can we play Tigers?”
She had no idea how she knew all of that stuff. Romana grinned slightly at him, “Why thank you. Play tigers? And how do we play tigers, my love?”
“You be the Mommy Tiger, I’ll be the baby Tiger. No, I’ll be the big girl Tiger. Daddy’s the Daddy.” Daisy said, in her two-year old voice.
“Like this?” Severus asked, lifting his hands and pointing his fingers at her, as if holding up claws. “Rawr!”
Romana giggled a little and then followed suit, going rawr at her daughter and then reaching out to tickle her. “You do know that Mommy Tigers give their cubs baths by licking them, right?” she teased, going to chase her as if she was going to lick her a bit.
Daisy gave a little squeal, then squirmed out of her mother’s grasp and started to run away. The zoo was a fairly safe place for children to run, so Severus didn’t see a problem in it. He followed long after them, listening to Daisy’s peal of laughter.
“No, Mommy, no! Licking is gross! I’m not food!” She cried out, getting swept up into her mother’s arms again.
Severus laughed, catching up quickly with his girls, and wrapping arms around them both.
Thankfully there weren’t so many people around that they weren’t going to knock anyone over. Romana chased after her, sticking her tongue out at her until Daisy fell into her arms.
“I don’t know.. you could be quite tasty.” She kissed her daughter all over her face and acted like she was going to nibble on her arm. “We can nibble on daddy too.”
“Oh, no, I’m sure daddy doesn’t taste good...” Severus said, though Daisy had latched onto that idea and was now turning around and pretending to bite her father’s arm. A laugh escaped Severus that he couldn’t stop, and he struggled with the tiny girl, squirming as she bit at his arms and fingers.
That just made Romana laugh a little more. “You only get to nibble us, no nibbling on other people. They wouldn’t understand. And it’s not nice.” She didn’t want Daisy to go around biting other kids cause she thought it was okay. “We were just playing.” And she barely touched Daisy with her teeth.
Severus nodded, putting Daisy back down on the ground. He agreed with Romana. How strange and awkward would it be if Daisy started to nibble on other people?
"Good girl. No biting." He said, then ruffled Daisy's hair and turned to continue walking with the pair of them through the zoo. "I think we ought to see the monkeys next. What do you think, Daisy? What do monkeys say?"
Hopefully that settled that. Romana took Daisy’s hand as they walked through the zoo to the monkeys. Daisy seemed thrilled at the thought of seeing monkeys. She immediately let go of her mother’s hand to start imitating them. Romana nudged Severus playfully and whispered. “Careful or I’ll tell her that you act like that sometimes.”
Severus smirked. “Oh, the things that my daughter doesn’t know.” He said, then brought one hand down to pinch his wife’s backside.
Daisy was giving “ooh!” sounds and grabbing at her armpits, acting like the most adorable little monkey in the world. “I want to see George!” (Curious George, obviously.)
She jumped a little at her bum being pinched, eyes wide. Oh no she hadn’t been expecting that at all. “No she doesn’t. Like that you’ve got grabby hands.” She stuck her tongue out at him. Oh she was going to get him back.
Romana laughed and lead the way to the monkeys. At the monkey cage, she lifted Daisy up so that she could see them as they came to the front of the cage.
Severus was in a mood, apparently. He grinned, one eyebrow raised, and let his hands wander around her, wrapping his arms around her middle to hug her from behind for a moment. Oh, he’d enjoy her revenge. Very much.
Then Romana was lifting Daisy so the young girl could see. The monkeys always seemed to put on a good show. “Look, Daisy,” Severus said. “They’re swinging.”
Okay well that wasn’t too bad. At least he was being appropriate at the zoo. She leaned back against him gently and turned her head and grinned.
Hopefully the monkeys wouldn’t throw poo. Daisy watched and made some more monkey noises. “Aren’t they cute?” she tickled Daisy a bit.
Severus could control himself. Sometimes. Especially in public. He leaned against the railing and watched the monkeys swinging around from the tree branches and showing off. “I heard a story once about a guy who stole a monkey from the zoo to try and impress his girlfriend.”
“Really? See I’m not sure that I’d be all that impressed with a monkey.” Romana said with a shake of her head. “They do throw poo at people.” Daisy turned around all wide eyed. “They do??” and her mother nodded. “Afraid so.”
Severus nodded. “I think that’s exactly what happened in this case. The San Francisco zoo. And the girlfriend was so unimpressed that she turned in her idiot boyfriend and they got the monkey back safe and sound.”
Daisy looked relieved and even took a step back away from the monkey cage. “I don’t want poo on me, Momma.” Romana grabbed her hand and shook her head. “I won’t let the monkeys do that. I think they’re relatively behaved.” Though probably not. “Shall we move on to the giraffes? They don’t throw poo.”
Severus actually laughed softly at that. “Giraffes it is. I’m sure they don’t throw poo.” He turned to lead the way. The Giraffes were right next to the elephants, so they could look at both in one go.
“Quite. They don’t have any arms,” she teased Severus as they walked down the path to the large giraffe enclosure. “Look at how tall they are. They can eat all the leaves off that tree. We should get some ice cream soon.”
“Ice cream! Ice cream!” Daisy had absolutely no interest in giraffes or elephants now that she had the idea of ice cream in her brain.
Severus laughed. “I think ice cream is an excellent idea,” he said, lifting Daisy up onto his shoulders. “Lead the way. We’ll find some... chocolate ice cream?”
“Vanilla!” Daisy cried out.
Romana lead the way over to the guy who was selling ice cream out of his little cart thing. She got a vanilla ice cream for Daisy and then one of those rainbow things for herself. “What animal next, Daisy dear?”
Severus decided to steal a little from each of them. He didn’t need his own. Daisy’s ice cream was closest, as she was still on top of his shoulders. He nabbed a bite, then turned to head off down the path away from the ice cream cart.
Daisy’s mouth was so full that when she responded “the otters” it splattered vanilla ice cream all over her father’s hair.
What an absolute minx. She stuck her tongue out at him when he took some of Daisy’s ice cream. Better than her own. Romana tried not to laugh at Daisy getting ice cream in his hair.
“Otters it is.” And then wordlessly, she handed her husband a napkin.