Chapter 625: Petting Zoo, and Dogs and Cats

“Meeeh! Meeeh!”

“Yes, those are goats, aren’t they?”

Fuyuka was extremely excited by the goats inside the fence, looking as if she was about to leap out of my mother’s arms.

The day after visiting my grandfather’s grave, we arrived at a famous fureai bokujō, or petting zoo. As usual, we popped over with a [Gate].

I had mentioned going to the zoo on our honeymoon to the children, and they were jealous, so I thought about taking them again.

However, going to the same zoo would be unoriginal, so I changed the plan a bit.

More importantly, I—as a big brother—acted to satisfy Fuyuka’s “I want to touch animals” desire. I was glad none of the children objected.

The petting zoo we came to was quite large, and we could interact with various animals.

Immediately upon entry, there was a free-range area, which is what had Fuyuka so excited.

Inside the fence were goats, sheep, donkeys, ponies, miniature pigs, ducks, and even geese. Customers could enter the enclosure and interact with the animals.

“Oh, they sell food over there.”

Elze pointed to a vending machine selling feed. So you can buy it from a machine.

Animal crackers… They can be given to goats, sheep, pigs, rabbits, birds, and horses. It seems okay for the animals in this free-range area.

I bought one, and a bundle of about ten crackers dropped out. That’s quite a lot.

Should I buy two for everyone? But that would mean buying over forty bundles…

Near the entrance fence, a sign read: Please be careful, as animals may jump on you or headbutt you if you are holding food. Small children, pregnant women, and the elderly are advised to take caution.

Upon closer look, animals were indeed flocking and running toward customers who were feeding them. Someone else’s child was quite frightened by the animals’ excitement. Ah, he was rescued by his father, who scooped him up.

“It might be better for the children to feed them from outside the fence. And then they can go inside to pet them once the food is gone, don’t you think?”

Leen was right; you can feed them from outside the fence. I don’t think any of my children would be harmed by the animals here, but it’s a precaution.

Those who wanted to enter went inside, but for now, the children decided to feed the animals from outside the fence. I chose to feed them from the outside, too.

I cut the paper tape bundling the crackers and offered one to a sheep nearby.

The sheep stretched its neck out and began munching the cracker from my hand with a great, hearty gulp. Wow, they are aggressive…

When I tried to give it another one, a goat interrupted with a Don! from the side and snatched the cracker from my hand. Are these guys that hungry?

“Ah, I was trying to give that to the other one!”

“Wow, they are crowding around so much!”

“They’re cute. Eat up, eat up.”

The children seemed to be enjoying themselves, though flustered by the animals swarming the feed.

The group that went inside, however, was having a tough time…

“Wait a minute! No, don’t take that!”

“One at a time, one at a time, for sure! Whoa, whoa, whoa!”

“Ow…! Don’t lean on me…!”

Elze, Yae, and Sakura were being jostled and surrounded by the animals. Uh oh, their clothes are getting dirty… I’ll have to use [Clean] later…

Look at that goat over there; it’s standing on its hind legs and leaning on Sakura. The ‘give it to me’ aura is intense.

The animals instantly swarmed a bundle of crackers that a flustered Sakura dropped whole.

That gap allowed Sakura to be released, and a few of the animals that were crowding Elze and Yae also moved away.

Sakura looked conflicted, a mixture of disappointment that her food was gone and relief at being freed from the animals.

“Sakura, do you want my share of the food?”

“…No. I’ve had enough experience.”

Rejecting my offer, Sakura started petting a nearby sheep.

The children who finished feeding also went inside.

The goats and sheep are generally docile. If there’s no food.

The ponies are calm, too. They are definitely small for horses. They’re about the same height as me now. Are they foals?

“I don’t think ‘pony’ is a breed name, is it?”

“That’s right. Small horses below a certain size are generally called ponies.”

My father answered my question. I thought so. Does that mean this pony and that pony over there are different species? That one over there is extremely small.

Its height is lower than mine as a child; it’s only about the size of a dog.

“That might be a Falabella? I think it’s the world’s smallest horse… It’s probably an adult.”

“That’s an adult…”

Small body but an adult inside… Wait? I’m getting a sense of déjà vu and affinity…

“Meeeh! Meeeh!”

“Yes, that’s a sheep, isn’t it?”

Fuyuka was all smiles, happily petting a sheep. …Do both goats and sheep say meeeh? I feel like the sheep’s voice is a little deeper.

“So fluffy!”

“It is fluffy, for sure.”

Steph and Sue were stroking the sheep. There are both white-faced and black-faced ones. Are they different breeds?

The younger lambs aren’t quite fluffy yet; they look slender. They are cute in their own way.

“I think they will look quite nice with a little more meat on them, Mother.” “Yes. I believe they will grow to a good size in about a year. They have a promising future.”

“Oink…?”

Lucia and Arcia were murmuring as they pet a miniature pig. …They are just petting it, right? It looks like they’re checking the fat on it…

Ah, the pig ran away from them. Sorry, little piggy. They didn’t mean any harm…

A duck approached the pig that ran away and was quacking something.

“Didn’t I tell you to watch out for those two? I got a scary look from them, too.” “It was scary. I shouldn’t have gone near them. I regret it.”

…Just kidding.

Speaking of which, there was a movie with a piglet and a duck. A piglet taken to a farm who was originally destined to become sausage and ham, but ends up living as a pig who herds sheep instead of a sheepdog.

I wonder if the animals here are talking to each other like the piglet and duck in that movie.

Hmm, when the surroundings are this idyllic, my thoughts tend to drift toward fairytales.

After getting our fill of the free-range animals, we headed toward another area.

“It looks like there’s a Dog and Cat Interaction Building over there.”

Following Linze’s direction, we came to a building where we could interact with dogs on the first floor and cats on the second. It costs 500 yen for thirty minutes.

“Since going to both will take time, should we split up and go to the one we prefer?”

“That might be better.”

Yumina’s proposal unexpectedly led to a split between the dog and cat factions.

Yae, Yakumo, Hildegard, and Frei were Dog Faction. Leen, Quun, Sakura, and Yoshino were Cat Faction. Elze, Elna, Linze, and Linne were Dog Faction. Lucia, Arcia, Yumina, and Kuon were Cat Faction. Sue, Steph, my father, my mother, and Fuyuka were Dog Faction.

Allis was Cat Faction because Kuon was Cat Faction. Kuon must be Cat Faction because he loves Kohaku. Sakura also has Nyantarō.

Yumina is actually Dog Faction, but she chose the same as Kuon.

Me? I apologized to Kohaku, but I went with the dogs since Fuyuka was going there.

I could almost hear Kohaku’s voice saying, “How could you!?” but I’m sorry. Please forgive me; I’m actually Cat Faction.

We split from the Cat Faction and paid the entrance fee with the Dog Faction members.

“Wow! So many puppies!”

Steph’s eyes sparkled, and she rushed toward the dogs walking around the room. Hey, hey, don’t startle them. That chihuahua over there ran away.

“There are a lot of them.”

“Mom, that one is cute!”

Elze and Elna headed toward a Toy Poodle puppy.

There were many different breeds of dogs here: Pomeranian, Chihuahua, Pug, Mameshiba (Miniature Shiba Inu), Border Collie, Dachshund, Yorkshire Terrier, Golden Retriever, Toy Poodle, Maltese… And other breeds I didn’t recognize were walking around in every corner. There were also some larger breeds, but they were small in stature. Are they puppies?

All the dogs seemed docile and accustomed to humans. Perhaps they selected dogs with such temperaments.

“Woof-woof, woof-woof!”

Fuyuka was also in high spirits, petting a Pomeranian that came up to her. If Blanca saw this, she might go crazy with jealousy. …I should take a picture.

I also stroked the head of a Golden Retriever that approached me. He’s a calm one.

“This reminds me of the dog my family used to keep at home, for sure.”

Yae said this while petting a Mameshiba.

“Oh, the Kukunoe family used to have a dog? What was its name?”

“It was Yaiba (Blade), for sure. It passed away when I was eight…”

Wow… that’s a cooler name than I expected… It’s a fitting name for a swordsman family.

Now that I think about it, I don’t see many dogs in Brunhild. Given the common knowledge in the other world, wolves are dangerous animals, and dogs are generally stray dogs, so it might be unavoidable.

Besides, cats hold the majority influence in our country… Nyantarō’s cat squad is perfect for gathering information in the castle town. Cats who bring valuable information are rewarded with good meals and sleeping spots… of course, the place is overrun with cats. To prevent the population from growing too large, we forcibly evict cats that cause trouble or get aggressive.

“They’re all such calm dogs.”

“I think they gathered dogs with temperaments like this because children come here to touch them.”

The dogs here all seem gentle-natured. They don’t jump around or bark loudly. Well, they might have been trained that way.

However, there is still some variation in personality; some dogs wander around wanting attention, while others lie down defiantly in a corner, acting like they couldn’t care less.

One reason I’m not a big dog fan is that I’m uncomfortable with their high-tension excitement, but I find these calm dogs acceptable.

“A-ha-ha-ha! You’re all such good boys!”

“Eh, is she okay…?”

I noticed Frei was being mobbed by larger dogs like a Border Collie and a Golden Retriever. Are those the types that animals like?

I recall that Hildegard and Frei often took care of the horses in the stables… I’ve heard that for knights, horses are an indispensable presence. The word knight (Kishi in Japanese) even contains the character for horse.

While our high-ranking officers ride Pegasi or Gryphons, rank-and-file knights ride regular horses. However, the country itself isn’t that large, and we use [Gate] when traveling to other nations, so we don’t have enough horses to give one to every single knight. We only need enough for patrolling the domestic area.

Frei’s popularity with the animals might be because she’s used to interacting with them daily.

After enjoying our interaction with the dogs for the full time limit, we stepped out of the building, and the Cat Faction immediately came down from the second floor.

“How was it on your side?”

“There were lots of cats, and they were so cute!”

“Yes. They were cute. A cuteness that Nyantarō simply cannot produce. I guarantee it.”

Following Yoshino’s enthusiastic comment, Sakura offered a rather harsh opinion. He’s going to cry…

“It was quite fun. There were cats I had never seen before.”

“There was a fluffy white cat! It was so cute!”

Kuon and Allis seemed to have enjoyed themselves, too. A fluffy white cat… A Persian cat, perhaps. Well, I’m glad the Cat Faction had fun.

We walked through the zoo again as a group.

We could see and touch animals everywhere. It’s a different kind of fun than a regular zoo.

“That’s a huge horse, isn’t it?”

“A Percheron… The world’s largest draft horse.”

“Neigh!”

My mother, father, and Fuyuka exclaimed at a large horse standing by the side of the road.

There was one horse tied with a chain that was taller than my father. However, our reaction was lukewarm. Well, we’re used to seeing much larger horses in the other world…

There are large horses in Japan, too, like the Dosanko breed, but this one must be even bigger.

Speaking of which, my grandfather once told me that the horses ridden by Sengoku warlords in TV dramas were mostly Western breeds, and originally, Japan only had small native breeds with a height of around 130 centimeters.

They probably use horses like Thoroughbreds to look good on screen, but people in ancient Japan were shorter than they are now, so the balance probably wasn’t too bad even on a small horse. I heard the average height for men during the Sengoku period was around 155 or 156 centimeters.

There was a horseback riding corner past the Percheron, but the children didn’t seem very interested. Well, they’re in an environment where they can ride whenever they want…

In the area beyond that, there were many rabbits in a fence. Is this the Rabbit Area?

The cuteness of the rabbits had the children and the wives’ eyes sparkling, and they rushed toward them. It’s a huge difference from the horse area…

I mean, you call them cute, but you sometimes eat rabbits, right? Well, I eat chicken but think chicks are cute, so maybe it’s not that weird…?

It seemed you could feed the rabbits, but there were no carrots. They only had pellet-shaped food or hay. I thought rabbits were supposed to eat carrots.

My father explained to me why I was mistaken.

“Ah, that’s a misconception. Rabbits aren’t particularly fond of carrots. That image came from a globally famous rabbit protagonist drawn by a British children’s book author. The idea that ‘rabbits love carrots’ spread because of that. Although, the book says the character was actually eating radishes…”

I’ve seen that rabbit from the picture book. The one wearing a blue jacket. So, it wasn’t a carrot but a radish… I was certainly mistaken…

“Carrots are high in sugar and calories, so if you feed them to rabbits, they might gain weight. They’re fine as a snack, but an everyday diet of them would be like eating cake every meal.”

“Ah… Gaining weight would be bad.”

It might not be a big deal for a human, but for a rabbit, it’s high-calorie.

Gaining too much weight is also bad for their health. …Oh, the wives who were petting the rabbits have stopped moving.

“They’re being put on a perpetual diet, aren’t they…”

“If only you were human, you could eat as many carrots as you wanted…”

“Should we make a carrot cake when we get back…”

The wives were looking at the rabbits with eyes that seemed to say, misery loves company. Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t have said anything…

After playing with the rabbits for a while, we moved to the next area.

Hmm? This area has a water feature inside the fence, but what kind of animal is it? Since it’s facing away, I can’t quite tell. Is it a wild boar?

The animal must have noticed us because it turned around. Is that a…

“Um… that is, the…”

“Capybara.”

“Yes, that’s it.”

I was close to remembering it, but my mother said it first. I knew that, okay? I just couldn’t recall it.

“Cute.”

“They are cute.”

Sakura and Yoshino reached out their hands toward the capybara.

Really…? With its long upper lip, it just looks like a goofy face to me…

“Capybaras are related to mice. In Kanji, they are written as ‘Water Pig’ (Suibutsu).”

“A mouse? There are species like the Giant Rat in the other world, but they are not this cute.”

Linze gave a subtle retort to my father, who still knows all sorts of useless trivia.

The Giant Rat is that thing, right? The massive sewer rat found in dungeons… It’s too bad to compare the capybara to those guys. The capybara has a different level of cleanliness. Those guys smell…

Well, compared to those, it might be cute.

We said goodbye to the capybara, and as we walked further, we saw a place where goats and sheep were grazing. Is this another petting area?

“Only the children are here.”

“You’re right.”

Upon closer inspection, there were only young goats (kid goats) and lambs. Uh, is this a milk feeding experience? Ah, we can feed them milk with a bottle.

500 yen per bottle… That’s quite a price… We should probably skip letting everyone do it… The kid goats probably can’t drink that much either.

We bought five bottles, and the children decided to share one bottle between two of them, taking turns to feed.

“Whoa, whoa! Wait a minute!”

“Aww! No cutting in line!”

As always, the animals were intensely demanding. Five kid goats and lambs stuck their heads through the fence and started a fierce battle for the bottle, all wanting to go first. The meeeh meeeh meeeh sounds were tremendous.

It was truly survival of the fittest. Though they are animals far removed from such a saying.

The keeper explained that this is a limited-time opportunity. Of course. They couldn’t force them to drink if they were full.

The five bottles were quickly emptied, and the kid goats and lambs wandered off, looking satisfied. A few still thought they might get more, stretching their necks toward the empty bottles. Sorry, that’s all.

As we watched the kid goats who still looked thirsty, a growling stomach sound, guuuh, came from somewhere. Everyone’s eyes focused on a single point.

“…I told you it wasn’t me, for sure. Why do you always look at me first?”

“Well, because…”

“See…”

That much should be obvious by now. Then we looked at Frei, the second most suspicious person, but she vehemently shook her head while holding an empty bottle.

“I’m sorry, that was me. I’m getting hungry…”

It was Allis who raised her hand shyly. It is almost noon. I’m getting hungry, too.

“It looks like there’s a restaurant over there. Shall we go?”

In the direction my mother pointed, there was a lodge-style building labeled ‘Makiba no Restaurant‘ (Ranch Restaurant). It certainly looked like a ranch restaurant.

I wonder if they have dishes made with fresh milk and meat. I felt the same way at the aquarium, but eating the animals’ meat when they are right next to you is a little uncomfortable…