Animal Attraction

This morning, Alex and I were preparing for a day at the Bronx Zoo. “Alex,” I said, “bring your animals. Bring all of them.” Into the backpack tumbled the detailed plastic zebra, gorilla, giraffe, lions (male and female), and tiger.

These hard plastic figures about four or five inches long or tall (except the giraffe), with detailed painted faces and molded texture. Alex has all the animals mentioned above, plus a butterfly, a couple of chickens, assorted less-detailed barnyard critters from cheaper sets, and elephants in three sizes (and three different moods, judging from the open roaring mouths and raging tusks). Sometimes the makers of these toys will sell the same animal in several poses; you can, for instance, buy a cougar merely walking or a cougar with one paw raised and claws extended. They go for about $8 a pop.

Alex almost got the cougar a few weeks ago in a hobby store, except on the way to the registers he ripped off the tag and anyway he’d gotten a giraffe or something just a day before. “Bear? Bear?” Alex kept calling the cougar. We would correct him. “Bear? Bear?” he’d say again.

Alex has had buying jags before (no, now that you mention it: jaguars has never been one of the animals he buys). Books in bookstores, chocolate bars in grocery stores. He’s also had jags of lining up the stuff he buys, such as Scrabble letters. Once he lined up the Scrabble letters to spell “L-I-Q-U-O-R-S”, and another time he lined them up to spell “B-R-O-N-X Z-O-O.”

“Alex, bring your animals! Bring them all!”

I figured, what a chance! Hold the realistic plastic animal up to the glass and see the real thing right behind it! Don’t tell me I’m not a good autism dad!

It didn’t, however, ignite as I thought it might. He liked Tiger Mountain — amazing how BIG those cats are — but the gorillas and the elephants and the giraffes weren’t nearly as interesting to Alex as the “Paper! Paper!” he kept wanting. Turns out this was a zoo map, as I learned when we passed an information booth.

So how deep does Alex’s animal attraction run? He did select only the plastic tiger from his backpack to hold with the map on the subway ride home. And in the coffee shop, he insisted on every animal on the table, with the map, over his chicken fingers. How deep does Alex’s animal attraction run? Who can say, as usual?

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Toys for children with autism, from Autism Behavior Strategies.