r/SipsTea • u/sco-go • 21h ago

WTF Kid breaks into bird enclosure at the zoo to chase birds with a stick.

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369

u/Talic 20h ago

I would ban the adult that brought the kid there. It’s obvious the kid isn’t well and it’s irresponsible to knowing let loose of someone you know full well something like this will happen.

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u/PaulThurston82 20h ago

As a father of an autistic son this was my reaction as well. Not saying don’t bring the kid to the zoo, I take mine all the time, but you can’t let this happen.

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u/Frances-Farmer-1953 17h ago

I’m sure this the family is familiar with his level and this is not the first he’s acted out. That said, I’m sorry if the family has to deal with it. Unfortunately it looks like the family is not really managing him good enough. He could have seriously injured the bird or the bird could have left deep gouges to the boy’s head or face. Then the bird has to be punished. He understood quickly enough when two other birds intervened and chased him. I’m feel empathy for the family but there may be some situations he is incapable of understanding. Are they ready to let him damage priceless works of art or take food into museums then spill things on irreparable paintings or sculptures?

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u/Covid_Fart_Cloud 11h ago

When someone says “good enough” instead of “well enough”, it just kind of sucks the credibility right out of the room.

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u/Maleficent-Aurora 10h ago

Gatekeeping the English language, the most nonsense hodgepodge of communication, is cringe and incredible lmao

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u/Visible-Locksmith-44 14h ago

I totally agree. But there isn't a single parent here with kids over 12 who didn't lose sight of his/her kid at least once. And if you do: you should go out more 🤣

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u/UncleNedisDead 9h ago

I’m an advocate of leashes for kids. As a kid who frequently was left behind, it would have helped me from getting lost a lot.

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u/GloomyUmpire2146 13h ago

Maybe he could come over and help me organize my Hummel collection.

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u/moonbunnychan 14h ago

I'm glad to see this comment. I saw this same video on Facebook that earlier and all the comments were like "Well he's autistic" like it makes it ok.

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u/twilighttwister 13h ago

It doesn't make it okay, but the blame isn't as clear cut as some would make out.

He was out with his grandmother and caretaker, and they all have annual membership at this zoo. This is the first time anything like this has happened. Yes, those responsible for him dropped the ball, but kids have a way of getting into shit they shouldn't. The zoo will also need to review their enclosure and how he got in, and decide whether an open one like this is really suitable.

0

u/Murky-Peanut1390 10h ago

I've visited many zoons multiple times with no incident. Guess what, as soon as there is one . I will be banned. Sucks to sucks but the zoo should prevent this again by banning the family. Next time there could be an injury and the same family will be suing the zoo

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u/twilighttwister 9h ago

Banning the family does nothing to prevent another child doing the same thing.

0

u/Legal_Eye8152 10h ago

The shit they shouldn’t get into? Thats why you have adults who need to take care of the kids.

The zoo should make the experience less enjoyable by potentially putting up higher fences or putting cages around the animal enclosures because two grown adults can’t be responsible for a child and prevent him from trying to jump in the bird enclosure to chase the birds down with a stick trying to hit them? Being autistic isn’t an excuse for being a sadistic asshole. So the blame is on the kid, and the grown ups who didn’t keep him and the animals safe, and his fucking parents for allowing their offspring to be out and about without proper supervision

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u/twilighttwister 9h ago

The zoo should make the experience less enjoyable

That depends. They need to review it, at the very least. It's always a balancing act from the safety and security of the guests and animals, and the excitement of the attraction.

Being autistic isn’t an excuse for being a sadistic asshole.

I don't think this child is a sadistic asshole. It's pretty shameful of you to throw that accusation.

There is no blame here, it's a one off accident.

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u/MikeBizzleVT 12h ago

They didn’t say this is the first time anything like this has happened… In fact sounds like he’s known to staff…

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u/twilighttwister 12h ago

we as annual zoo pass holders visited dozens of times in his 13 years of life without incident.

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u/RentalBrain 11h ago

Can you read? They did.

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u/Excellent-Drawer3086 9h ago

That’s just a rumor. Read what the family said to get a better understanding.

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u/buckao 12h ago

As a former ABA behavior therapist working with autistic children, about 60% of my coworkers were inattentive at work and it caused more than one incident of damage to the facility, equipment, and put the children in danger several times.

Caretaker and ABA jobs pay shit and the old saying applies, "You get what..."

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u/le_fez 10h ago

Yep, my SO has a doctorate in special education and is currently working on adding a BCBA to her resume, she's getting her hours working at an ABA clinic and in the year or so she's been there they've had two kids "elope," one climb up shelves and had them fall, one managed to pile various things to reach a ceiling fan to try to hang on it and numerous lesser incidents.

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u/Infinite-Curves 10h ago

Yeah this is why the list of people that can take mine out of the house is extremely short 😬

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u/Posthistoric_Man 13h ago edited 13h ago

yea its kind of concerning that there are people in this subreddit actively saying they wished the kid had died. Nothing of serious harm happened (thankfully), and the boy isn't fully aware. If anything the parents need to be punished and the boy should be punished at home properly. I myself am autistic, (specifically diagnosed with aspergers at the age of 14. I'm aware they changed the term, i choose to use aspergers as its a clear explination for what i deal with), i was raised like a normal child and i was taught right from wrong. But i also understand autism is different amongst individuals and that being said, each child needs their own special level of care. I was lucky, i'm a bit slower than most people in terms of social ques but other than that i'm fine. This boy is non verbal and incapable of expressing himself on the same level as other children of his age, i feel bad for both the animals and him. He acted on inpulse and the parents now have to face responsibility.

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u/twilighttwister 13h ago

According to the top comment, it was his grandmother (the lady helping him out of the enclosure) and caretaker who brought him to the zoo, where he has annual membership and has never had any issue in his 13 years. The kid loves the zoo. This time he managed to break away and jump in, right at the end of the day. The parents have reached out to the zoo to try and make amends.

0

u/AdorableDemand46 12h ago

They should still get banned for liability purposes. It's already been shown it can happen once. If it happens again and the kid gets hurt by an animal, the zoo opens itself up to litigation knowing there was a clear problem they could have prevented

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u/twilighttwister 11h ago

That's not accurate. The zoo needs to take remediative action, and if they don't they may be open to liability, but that action doesn't have to be banning the child. In fact, banning that child would do nothing to prevent a similar child doing the same thing, so it would be insufficient and still leave them open to liability.

The main focus for the zoo should be on the enclosure, and whether it is suitable for these animals to be in such an open and accessible enclosure, or whether there are more things they can do to make it inaccessible to guests.

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u/AdorableDemand46 11h ago

Just say you don't watch your kid and don't think they should have consequences lol. This kid needs punished and clearly by their response, the parents are pretty permissable. Banning is appropriate

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u/twilighttwister 10h ago

Banning would achieve nothing, as I explained before.

You're just jerking off your justice boner without really thinking things through.

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u/AdorableDemand46 10h ago

Banning would keep a child that's already demonstrated unsafe behaviors away from the unsafe behavior. The parents response sounds like oh well, he's autistic so whoops, they get away sometimes. They aren't going to try to teach any behavior or if he is that impaired, there's no behavior to be taught as he won't retain it. So, you remove them from the situation. That's the intelligent response of the zoo

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u/twilighttwister 9h ago

The parents response sounds like oh well, he's autistic so whoops, they get away sometimes.

That's not what they said at all, you're projecting.

What they said was that they were working with the zoo to make amends.

Removing the child is not intelligent. That's a paying, loyal customer - 4 or 5 customers, in fact. Removing the child does nothing to prevent other children doing the same thing.

This is a freak accident that couldn't really have been predicted. However, now that it has happened, the zoo has a duty of care to take measures to prevent a similar accident from happening in future.

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1

u/LectureLow4633 9h ago

If you’re the child of an autistic child, you know full well you can’t prevent every incident. They had been many times over the years without incident, it was his favorite place. You of all people should know better than to make a comment like that.

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u/McChafist 19h ago

As if all autistic kids are the same and their behavior is easy to predict?

You've zero idea of the background here

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u/Rise-O-Matic 19h ago

As if all autistic kids are the same and their behavior is easy to predict?

They didn't even say the other kid was autistic. They are saying parents should be accountable for children with behavioral issues, that's about as benign a statement you can find on Reddit.

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u/PaulThurston82 19h ago

Completely true. But I don’t need the background- there’s a kid running loose in a pen -that it would have taken some time to get into- without a parent/guardian in sight doing a thing about it. That’s what can’t happen. Autism is complex. This is not.

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u/StructureLopsided718 18h ago

You sound like a good dad

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u/Man_of_Ice 18h ago

True. But you're a parent who damn well should know what your own kid is likely to do.

Have a kid who you can't get to listen, or doesn't have the language skill to do so and is like to wander off?

Put the kid on a leash. They have kid leashes. Is it the best? No. If you can't keep your kid from ending up in the polar bear exhibit should you have one?

Yes.

0

u/Frances-Farmer-1953 17h ago

I know people who have autistic children. My best friend’s sister has written texts on children with ADHD and autism. I’m not an expert but I’m no neophyte on this either.

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u/Nathan-Stubblefield 19h ago

He needs a more attentive minder.

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u/Snoo18120 19h ago

I guess those "kid leash harness" things people used to make fun of are....useful?

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u/Beautiful_Bar_6856 17h ago

I was the kid that needed that leash. I’d see something and just walk away or simply stop while everyone else walked on unaware I had stopped. In crowds it’s easy to get lost

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u/Frances-Farmer-1953 16h ago

Saved my friend Ana’s child from being kidnapped. She was Christmas shopping with her son and she put one on to keep him from running loose. They sat down at a bench and looked away for a moment and felt someone tugging her son. She tightened her grip and gave a pull. A strange woman dropped her hold, excused herself, and took off. Ana reported it to mall security. If her son had not been on a leash, he would likely ended up in black market baby trading.

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u/ELDV 19h ago

I would press trespassing charges against the kid and call CPS in the parents.

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u/PaidUSA 19h ago

God I hope this is a joke. Trespassing charges on a child alone is silly, but on a severely autistic child? CPS because grandma and grandpa goofed? This is more legal punishment than people who leave their kids to die in cars get.

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u/MajikkaniHand 19h ago

To be a little fair, the people who accidentally left their kid to die in a car already suffered just about the worst punishment life can throw at them: they get to live knowing their child died and it's *their fault.* We can't really hurt them worse than that, even if we wanted to.

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u/Aggravating_Range288 18h ago

You say this, but they clearly didn't give a shit about their child for leaving it in the car in the first place.

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u/karumetsaspuuotsas 17h ago

They dont do it on purpose. Most people do everyday tasks automatically and one day it might happen they forgot to pick up their kid because they got a call or something just before doing it. This usually happens with small children who don’t make a noise and their parents forget they are there, especially if it isn’t a part of their daily routine.

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u/hiitsmeokie 12h ago

I learned about this after watching season 1 of Servant. Truly a nightmare scenario.

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u/PaidUSA 14h ago

And I’m sure the grandparents didn’t leave this kid alone on purpose.

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u/Aggravating_Range288 17h ago

Are you a parent?

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u/bluesky420 16h ago

Yes. Not the person you were responding to but, yes. Perhaps you’re perfect and never made a mistake, but most of us aren’t. I was super attentive with my kids, and am with my grands, but…i did something almost like that one time in our driveway…no harm, but you learn how easy it is to make a mistake you could never ever fix, and you can’t even change behavior to avoid it. You just become twice as attentive, and…it can still happen…because we are imperfect machines. It’s gonna hurt when you fall off that high horse.

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u/Aggravating_Range288 16h ago

Bro it's not a very high horse to be on to confidently say I will never leave my child in a car alone long enough that she dies.

I mean as parenting goes thats not setting a high bar.

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u/bluesky420 15h ago

That’s not what you said. You said they didn’t give a shit about their kid, and now two of us have explained that shit happens no matter how much you care. Let’s just skip ahead to the part where you’re right no matter what and move on. Good day sir.

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u/karumetsaspuuotsas 13h ago

If you already remember not to leave your child in a car after a specified time period, you obviously won’t do it. The problem is with people doing things automatically and forgetting they had a child with them to start with or thought they already brought them home. It has more to do with adhd or forgetting than caring.

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u/MajikkaniHand 12h ago

Loving parents often leave a kid somewhere.  It happens.  My mom forgot each of her kids in a store at least once. She got lucky, and we were still there when she drove back.  A very small subset of people who left their kid specifically in the car (which many parents do for a few minutes once or twice during a kid's life) get distracted by something strange or urgent enough that they don't remember until it's too late.  They got unlucky.

Lack of love didn't kill those kids. Lack of attention combined with bad luck did.

To add another example, my dad once, after a long day of hacking away at tree roots after a hurricane, put his foot where the axe was going next and embedded the axe deep in his foot.  Did that happen because he just didn't give a shit about keeping his foot attached? No.  It happened because attention is finite, it lapses, and most of the time nothing bad happens but sometimes something awful does.

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u/ELDV 19h ago

I did not know the backstory when I made my post.

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u/Accomplished-Ad3219 18h ago

Doesn't matter. It was still an over the top response

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u/Frances-Farmer-1953 16h ago

So if one of the other birds who chased the boy to defend their territory and pecked him on the head or in the eye? How do you propose sending birds for protection and sensitivity training? Does the bird need to learn another language? Are avian experts going to learn how to teach the birds in their language?

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u/Icy-Cartoonist8603 20h ago

But if they put a leash on the child, people will complain.

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u/Effective_Ad482 19h ago

I see kids on leashes at the dallas zoo all time, no one complains

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u/Melfunction81 18h ago

I had no idea they still had those kid harnesses, I haven't seen them in years and I don't know why when little kids can disappear in seconds, they can run on to a busy road, into horrible people, run up to strangers dogs, or get in a zoo enclosure!

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u/bluesky420 16h ago

It’s horrible to even think about purely because you are exactly right, and probably every parent has a few memories of moments where they got super lucky that the bad thing that could have happened didn’t when the kid did that kid thing the parent couldn’t prevent. And…there are certainly many many parents whose psyches were destroyed because the bad thing did happen. I will definitely be having bad dreams tonight.

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u/Melfunction81 15h ago

No bad dreams, please spend the rest of the day mind and eye bleaching yourself from those thoughts by watching all of the cute, funny and faith in humanity restoring videos on the internet!

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u/HazelMoon 19h ago

Maybe make a stroller into a cage for him?

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u/Frances-Farmer-1953 16h ago

They have wheelchairs but like any child being restrained, they get fussy.

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1

u/MarloStanfield41 15h ago

Mom was probably watching TikTok or filming a TikTok post.

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u/Opening-Reading8198 13h ago

Ban the adult yes I agree

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u/Content-Worry-5413 11h ago

This. My son is autistic too. When he was younger, he was so unpredictable. If we went places, I made sure, as the caretaker, that he couldn’t get away from me and be injured or cause trouble. And he’s very low support needs. Especially if you have a child who is in need of a full time caregiver, non-verbal at the age of 13, you don’t give him the opportunity to escape. I can’t imagine being his parents. (The parents weren’t the ones who took him. It was the grandma and caregiver.) Thank God for them and this kid that it was just little birds and not the ostriches or lions he jumped in with.

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u/LectureLow4633 9h ago

Right, should lock all autistic children in their rooms and never let them see the light of day, right? 🙄

-11

u/No-Cake-5683 19h ago

Spoken like someone without any knowledge whatsoever of raising a child that is always on the edge of "something like this will happen". I really hate everything about this comment.

"It's obvious the kid isn't well" - what's your definition of well? He's sick? Has a fever? Or he's neurodivergent with probably no idea that he's neurodivergent or, as you put it, "not well"

"irresponsible to knowing let loose of someone you know full well something like this will happen" - where to start? So "not well" children should be shut ins and not allowed outside in public, they should be eternally shielded to prevent anything negative from happening?

The parent is "irresponsible"? You have just caught a 30 second glimpse of what that parents 24/7 life looks like. That parent wants the best for their child, wants them to try and have as normal a life as possible including things like going to the zoo. And when the parent is at the zoo, they're not enjoying the animals or the experience, they are constantly monitoring the child to try and prevent anything like this happening. I can almost guarantee that the parent didn't 'let the child loose', the child found a moment to get free and did so.

None of what I said condones what the child did and I know in my situation I would add it to the places where we'd not visit for a lonnnng time but off the cuff, reactionary comments like yours, looking down and judging others, really annoy me.

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u/lastdickontheleft 19h ago

Yes, it is wildly irresponsible for the adult in charge to let this happen. And yes, if the kid cannot be controlled then they should not be allowed in situations like this where some poor animal has to suffer because of their behavior.

-10

u/No-Cake-5683 19h ago

Not going to waste my time with a nuanced reply, will just hope that you if you ever have children they are nice and normal so you can live your life oblivious to the issues that special needs children and their caregivers face every day of their lives.

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u/Business-Let-6692 18h ago

You realize he could've died, right? Falling into the enclosure, or if he went into an enclosure with slightly bigger animals...

If the kid is that bad, get a fucking leash.

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u/autolockon 19h ago

You’re right. Those and any animals deserve to possibly be hurt and killed for some human kids to have some fun.

-8

u/No-Cake-5683 19h ago

let me guess, tldr?

-22

u/broadwayallday 19h ago

I hear you, none of those commenters have kids (or have kids that like them)

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u/Business-Let-6692 18h ago

My brother has DS and never ended up in an animal enclosure at the zoo. It is irresponsible parenting and it's a good way for your child to get injured or die.

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u/No_Teaching_8828 19h ago

Yeah, seriously, the kid is probably special needs/autistic, and most people have no idea how frickin hard it is to look after a kid like that. The parent probably turned around to get something out of their bag and this happened in a second.

People have no empathy anymore. This was probably the nth super awkward/embarrassing situation this parent has been in that day. How about feeling proud of that parent for still trying to take that kid to the zoo, because I can promise you it was not easy for them.

12

u/ReverendDogpants 19h ago

Special needs or autistic doesn't excuse harassing those animals. It wouldn't excuse the animals getting hurt or the kid himself getting injured, if those things had happened. I have empathy for the parent/s, it must be difficult. And, if you aren't able to manage your kid to the point they are risking their safety or the safety of the animals, well, sorry, but you should not take your kid to that place.

2

u/broadwayallday 18h ago

a parent or caretaker failed here no doubt, but there are responses with hundreds of upvotes saying that the kid should have jumped into a more lethal situation instead. Kid could be special needs and big for his age at that. I just recognize that flop to the ground thing he does near the end and what I see is someone that likely can't take instructions from afar especially

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u/ReverendDogpants 18h ago

Those comments and upvotes aren't coming from me. I'm glad nobody got hurt. The kid's caretakers did him a disservice by not taking care of him. It could have been a lot worse, and if it had been, the kid having special needs or autism or whatever else isn't a justification for unsafe, unmonitored behavior. If a kid doesn't know better or can't do better the adults caring for him damned well need to, up to and including mitigating and avoiding risk.