REVIEW: 11 animals I touched last weekend

Hi! In yesterday’s Friday Dispatch, I told you about the otters I met at Coastal Wilds, a zoological park in Delaware, and I also mentioned that we Encountered other animals. We got to pet most of them!!!!!! Coastal Wilds has a lot of large herd animals, like Ankole-Watusi cattle (with ENORMOUS HORNS), donkeys, mules, goats, alpaca and camels.

Most of these, I did not pet. They also have a sloth named Charlie, who we fed, but did not touch! Sloths’ fur have a complicated microbiome, which keep them safe and healthy, and it’s not good for people or sloths to pet them. However, Charlie was a big ol’ ham who actively sought out the camera, stretched and posed and generally thrilled in human attention, and consumed veggies at an alarming rate. Absolute green bean fiend. I also didn’t pet Fern, the fennec fox, but that’s good, because I would’ve stolen her. I would’ve sneaked her into my purse and freakin’ skedaddled.

Here, I present “reviews” of each animal I petted, organized (as all my lists are!) by a goofy metric. Today, we’re going from “Felt NOTHING like how I imagined” to “Felt EXACTLY like how I imagined.”

Ahead of our visit to Coastal Wilds, I looked at some online reviews, to make sure I had my expectations in order. There was valuable info—bring a water bottle! All the onsite bathrooms are port-a-potties, but they’re well-maintained with real sinks! There are changing cabanas for the otter swim!—and then there was…this?

Okay, first of all, I don’t like how this guy described the capybara-petting experience he had in Tucson as something akin to a massage parlour. What is this “60 minutes for $30” thing????? Feels skeevy! Uncomfortable! And while I can’t speak to the experience this guy had in Delaware, I think maybe he misunderstood the Capybara Operating Instructions. Yes, we did receive very specific instructions on where to touch the capybara (her name was Harley) (her friends who were “off shift” for petting were named Suzuki and Yamaha). You feed her a veggie, then you touch her on the chin, and from there, can move to other parts of her body. And you know why? Because capybaras are BIG RODENTS and if you approach them from a part of their body they can’t see, they assume you’re a predator, swooping down on them!

Further, though…after petting a capybara…who would want to “run their hands all over” them for 60 minutes?!

Capybara? POKEY. ROUGH. They look like large guinea pigs, but are more akin to hedgehogs or porcupines, in terms of texture. That makes sense; they spend a majority of their time in the water, and, like I said, they’re big rodents, so they need their fur to be hardy, protective, moisture-wicking. They are friendly and curious in nature, but that does not translate to soft fur! They kind of feel like a scrubby brush you’d use on your car in the wintertime, to get ice off.

That said, 10/10 experience. When capybaras are sitting, their haunches make them sort of look like a very big kitty. I fed Harley a peach slice and several individual kernels of corn, and she drooled green spit into my hand.

The three-banded armadillo we hung out with, Guacamole, was my favorite animal “ambassador” aside from the otters. He was a character. His mom, Margarita, and his sibling, Pico de Gallo, were very sweet too! But our tour guide (Sarah) said Guacamole is everyone’s favorite, and I understand why.

First of all, he loves holding on to his tour guide’s finger when he’s being carried. It’s very cute! He just likes the stability!!! Guacamole’s enclosure is in the same larger room as Charlie the sloth, and Izzy the Iguana. We’d already met and interacted with Guacamole earlier in the trip, but when we entered Charlie’s enclosure, oh boy did Guacamole start doing stunts to try and get our attention. At one point he was running around his pen at full speed. Why!!! Baby boy!!!! Where are you going!

I knew little about armadillos before this trip! They, like the sloth, have long pointy claws on their front feet, although for digging (dirt!) instead of hanging (tree!). Did you know they walk on those claws? It makes them look like they’re perpetually on tippytoe. So, when Guacamole was running around his pen, I was imagining a cartoonish plinkitty-plinkitty-plinkitty-plinkitty sound effect.

Also, the armadillo’s “armor,” its carapace, is made of keratin, like its claws, or like a tortoise shell! So, I petted Guacamole’s shell, and it felt like a tortoise, or like fingernails. It’s cool to note that, when an armadillo balls up, its “parts” fit pretty much perfectly together—look how little space there is between the head and tail. Real-life Pokémon, that.

Very smooth guy. I’ve interacted with a lot of chickens in my day but I don’t think I’ve ever touched a rooster til now? I was surprised to find that his feathers felt more like that of a waterfowl, slicker and almost “plasticky.” I’ve always thought that roosters look sort of iridescent/oily, and I think that contributes to the waterproof feel! Also, the feathers seemed to be a different size and shape than hens’ feathers, less puffy/fluffy. His name was The Mayor. EXTREMELY friendly and curious. He is pals with the peacocks/peahens on site, and also a Polish chicken named Phil, who was bred to be a show rooster but went into early retirement because his tail was lopsided (in other words, his owner didn’t want to take care of him anymore). Now Phil has a “Best in Show” trophy personalized for him, and the Mayor walks alongside tour groups, patrolling the grounds and running the show.

Really, the millipede felt ME. I was the first to volunteer to hold this little freak. I let them crawl on me and I petted them gently, too! I love snakes so it makes perfect sense I would love this millipede—both have a number of legs that upsets people. The best way to describe how the millipede’s legs feel is to compare them to staples. Not like accidentally stapling your hand (ouch). But when you’re loading a new row of staples into your stapler, and you give a testing little push into the back of your wrist—like that! Like individual staples are taking very ginger steps across your skin.

The exoskeleton felt hard and perfectly buglike.

The wallabies live with the kangaroos—more on them in a second—and given we were there on an unseasonably warm October day, it made sense that everybody was mostly napping in the dirt. Stars! They’re just like us.

Luckily, these assorted marsupials were extremely amenable to petting/rubbing/scratching/patting. The otters reminded me of cats in texture and shape, but the wallabies and kangaroos reminded me of how many cats behave:

As a matter of fact! Walt, the wallaby who sits directly next to the gift shop and tries to sneak in there if left unobserved, reminds me of a cat I know! My brother’s cat, McFly, who is the same age as Dottie, has greyish stripey fur, which feels thick and somewhat coarse, almost wiry. Much like a certain wallaby I petted recently…hmm…

The kangaroos DO feel different. How different? Keep reading!

I am sure that I’ve petted a camel before, but somehow…I forgot they have curly hair?! So, when there was a camel named Ben chewing on the fence directly in front of me, I worked my fingers into his neck pretty well. It’s soft, but dense—think of a scrubber on a sponge. A camel is like a lumpy horse with loofahesque properties. They don’t spit but, like llamas/alpacas, they’re quite drooly!

I had a pretty good idea of what a kangaroo would feel like, because back in 2021, my mom met one at a fair. She’s not usually big on animals. But she did pet this kangaroo, astonishing my brother & me, and afterward she said she couldn’t believe how soft the kangaroo was. “You know I’ve always been more of an animal PRINT girl over an animal girl, but I was pretty dang happy to pet a kangaroo today,” she posted on Facebook at the time.1

Today, I reinforce the timeless wisdom of mothers everywhere. She is right. She is always right. Kangaroos are soft like a dream. Like a Snuggie, fresh out of the box. Like a glasses-cleaning-cloth married fleece-lined leggings and had a soft soft baby. Like the inside of your favorite sweatshirt, between washes 2–7, when it’s clean and smooth and hasn’t started pilling yet. Kangaroos are soft all over. The one “intact” male of the bunch, the alpha, if you will, had a very slightly different texture to his fur. Sarah our tour guide said he was more “velvety,” but I disagree—I think his fur felt more voluminous, though the strands themselves were the same. It’s as though there were a layer of down under his fur. I meant to ask if the kangaroos and wallabies take dust baths, like chinchillas! Most of the ones we saw seemed to prefer plain dirt to grass, so maybe they also like rolling about in dust. Or maybe it’s personal preference. Guess I gotta go back to find out!

The blue-tongued skink is as advertised. Blue-tongued (check), skink (double check). The scales on this feller, whose name is Godzilla, were smoother than I anticipated. The tactile feedback includes few ridges or bumps than you’d think, given how visibly segmented his scales are. A very alert, attentive guy, thick and heavy.

One thing, terrifying: His tongue feels like nothing. If I were a bug, he’d have me before I even knew what happened.

Iguanas feel like a football filled with cold pudding. This is Izzy. I love her.

I have petted many tortoises in my life! Coastal Wilds has some Sulcata tortoises. They’re the third-largest breed of tortoise on the planet, and, weirdly, my family had a Sulcata tortoise for a time, when I was a kid (long story!). His name was Sheldon. He was enormous. He did, in fact, run away, while he was supposed to be under my care. Yes, I am aware that a tortoise running away is extremely funny. Anyway.

We did not pet the Sulcata tortoises (they were having sex!) but we did pet the painted tortoise, who was much smaller, and his shell felt identical to the “scaly” outer edges of Guacamole the armadillo. Adorably, the tortoise—I believe his name was Ozzy—has a specific “favorite spot” on his back where he likes to be rubbed. So, I petted him there by rubbing the backs of my nails over his shell.

I’ve wanted to swim with otters ever since I read Lisa Hanawalt’s illustrated essay, Otters!!!, in Lucky Peach Magazine.2 So, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from the Main Event at Coastal Wilds. To quote Hanawalt, in the essay which has since been anthologized in her book Hot Dog Taste Test:

Yes.

Otters feel like…if a cat really, REALLY liked water. Soft, fluffy, sleek! Waterproof-ish but not oily. Not slick like the rooster feathers. They are basically muscle-tubes, but they did not feel ferret-like, which surprised me. They’re…soft…water kittens. Yeah! The best description is, “When your cat pushes her head through your hands because she wants the goat cheese on your plate, but wetter.” It was just how I imagined, thank you Lisa Hanawalt!

What Lisa Hanawalt could NOT have prepared me for: towel time.

Towel time happens when you get out of the pool. You need to dry off. The otters also need to dry off. So, naturally, what you do is, you sit on the deck with your towel over your legs, and the otters crawl in your lap and spin all around and do flips and barrel rolls and generally just sort of RUB ALL OVER YOU. There’s absolutely a reason for this, there’s some reason it’s good for their skin and their socialization and their development. I know because Becca, who was the Otter Manager during our visit, told us. But do I remember what the hell she said? Nope! And do you know why?

BECAUSE THE OTTERS GOT ON MY LEGS AND RUBBED AND ROLLED ON THEM WHILE MAKING BABY SQUEAKY NOISES AND IT WAS SO SOFT AND CHORNY I ALMOST PASSED OUT. I have no good photos from towel time because it’s too hard to take a photo of an otter while he is doing flips in your lab and hitting you in the tummy with his long wet ass. These two experiences together, the swim + the towel time, really made for a completely satisfying Otter Day. The swim was fun and playful and silly. Towel time was relaxing and cozy and sweet.

In conclusion, please enjoy this illustration from the Lisa Hanawalt essay: