“Where do you want to go first?” Amy's mom asked her.

           “I want to see the parrots!” Amy had already planned out which order she wanted to see the animals in. They walked over to the parrot enclosure, a small metal cage with a few branches inside. On one of the branches a large white parrot shuffled from one side of the branch to the other, swung its head around, and then repeated. “What’s wrong with that parrot mom?” Amy asked, concerned about the distressed animal.
          "I’m not sure. How about we check out a different animal?” Amy’s mom suggested. Amy led them over to the lion exhibit. The enclosure was a small cage with green metal bars and a dirt floor. Inside were two lions. One lion walked repeatedly in a small circle while the other lie in the corner gnawing on the metal bars of the cage. 
          “There must be something wrong with the lions too. Can we go to the monkey exhibit instead?” Amy asked her mom.

          “Sure” Amy's mom replied, and they walked over to the monkey enclosure. The metal cage contained a small tree, some ropes, and two monkeys. Both monkeys sat on the floor of the cage pulling at their black hair. Their arms and legs had large hairless patches on them. Amy felt distraught; were all zoos like this? These animals did not remind her of the animals she read about in textbooks and watched on animal planet.

          “I think I’m ready to go home” Amy told her mom.

          “We’ve only seen three exhibits? Don’t you want to go look at some more?” Amy’s mother asked, obviously confused. The zoo was all Amy could talk about the entire week before.

          “I don’t know, I just thought it would be different. All of these animals seem sad. I don’t really like seeing it,” explained Amy. Soon Amy was staring out the car window as they were driving home. Amy watched as a flock of birds flew together across the sky. The birds flew happily, chirping at one another. Amy thought about the parrot she saw in the zoo all alone in it’s enclosure. That parrot would never fly as freely as those birds; none of the animals in that zoos would ever get to be as free as those birds.