We were standing near the elephant enclosure, waiting for a talk to start. A zookeeper approached us holding out a glossy, lumpy, black rock, the size of a newborn baby. It was embedded with bits of digested hay.

“Do you know what this is?” she asked the Kid. He looked up at me nervously — we’ve been working on not saying “bathroom words” in public — but I smiled and said, “It’s OK, you can say it today.”

“It’s POOP!” he shouted, thrilling at the joy of the forbidden word. The zookeeper laughed. “That’s right!” And then she whispered an aside to me, “Don’t worry, it’s been shellacked.”

This was one of just many brushes with the wild we had on a recent Saturday morning at the Kansas City Zoo.

The Kid keeps a close eye on a polar bear at the Kansas City Zoo.

We met the donors of the gigantic poop, the zoo’s herd of African elephants, just a few minutes later. While another zookeeper narrated, the elephants were asked to do the series of behaviors that are necessary for their caretakers to keep them clean and healthy, such as kneeling and moving in a circle. In addition to answering my biggest question about the elephants — some only have one tusk because they’ve knocked the other out in rough play — the talk was remarkably well-timed. At only about 10 minutes, it was the perfect length of time for a small child’s attention span.

At the orangutan house, the smallest ape delighted us by playing with a blanket. He draped it around himself like a cape and played peek-a-boo as he climbed the outer wall. When he finally broke up the party by spitting at some nearby onlookers, I couldn’t decide if he was really tired of us or had just gone over the top hamming it up.

And then it was on to see the polar bears, penguins, tigers and the more domesticated animals. But the elephants were the Kid’s favorite — other than the rides, of course.

The Kansas City Zoo has ingeniously fit several rides into the park, such that you can see most of the animals even if you get tired of walking. Between the train, tram, boat and “sky safari” — think ski lift — we were able to see many more animals than we would have ever been able to cover on foot.

I particularly recommend the boat and sky safari as a quick way to take in the African section of the zoo. The boat will take you to the outer edge of the park where you can see the rhinoceros, crocodiles, lions and many others. Then the sky safari will take you back, flying you over the giraffes and zebras as you go.

The rides, which also include a carousel, do cost extra. They’re about $2 each, or you can buy a wristband ($5 for the train, tram and carousel; $9 for everything) that gets you unlimited rides all day. We bought the wristbands for everything, and with our admission our total for two adults and one child was about $60.

While that’s not an inexpensive Saturday out, it was worth every penny in fun. What’s more, while there are plenty of snacks for sale, the zoo allows patrons to bring in food and drinks. If you wanted to spend a whole day there you could easily bring your own cooler and treat your human animals to a picnic lunch.

Just maybe don’t eat it near the elephant poop!

— Meryl Carver-Allmond lives in Lawrence and writes about chickens, babies, knitting, gardening, food, photography, and whatever else tickles her fancy on any given day at mybitofearth.net.