My daughter's bravery

Last week, we visited a place called Snake Farm just outside of San Antonio on the way to Port Aransas. While we were walking around the outside animal sanctuary, a man and his family decided that they wanted to feed a macaque. So he broke off a branch from a nearby tree, and gave it to his daughter who was straddling the fence separating the animal's cage from the public.

That's when Stacy stepped in.

"I don't want you to do that," she told him. "You could make the animal sick."

Now this guy was well over six feet tall, and heavily built, and he towered over my daughter. "Do you work here?"

"No, but that doesn't matter. You're not allowed to feed the animals. You could make them sick."

"It's none of your business," he said. "You don't work here. You don't know anything about these animals. What gives you the right to tell me what to do?"

At this point, my wife, my son and I all chimed in at the same time and told him flat out he was absolutely wrong, that my daughter was absolutely right, and she had every right to tell him to stop.

"I work for an animal sanctuary a lot like this one," Stacy said. "What you're trying to do is going to make the animal sick. You keep away from it."

"Or you're gonna do what?" he challenged.

"Or I'm gonna go and tell the people that work here what you're doing."

And at that point he glared down at her, this petite 5' 4" young woman standing resolutely in front of him, standing up to him for what she knew is right, and....the best response he could come up with was to call her a tattletale.

A tattletale.

Really?

Is that the best you can do, big guy?

We walked away from him at this point and headed for the back entrance of Snake Farm, looking for someone who worked there. He didn't follow us inside, though. Although my son said that he saw the guy grimace and hit his fist against his own arm in anger.

And so Stacy "tattled" on him. We found a man who works at Snake Farm, told him what had happened, and headed on back to the car. Not because we were afraid of the guy, but because we needed to get back on the road to Port Aransas.

To be honest, I don't know that I would have stopped the guy if it had just been me. I'd like to think that I'd have had the courage to stand up for a helpless animal like that, but I'm really not sure. Regardless of my own self doubt, my daughter has the courage to stand up for what's right against what's wrong in great abundance.

You go girl. I'm really proud of you.