We are driving 220 miles to see the UK’s only short-beaked echidna, an egg-laying mammal native to Australia and New Guinea and now resident in Devon’s Paignton Zoo. I learnt about this extraordinary creature only a few months ago from my eldest son Theo, now nine, who has declared the echidna his favourite-ever animal (a position formerly held by the very unhalachic pig). It feels like a pilgrimage, somehow, all five of us in search of this rare monotreme whose back is covered in protective spines, and who, by the way, is called Bruce and is 49 years old.
When it comes to all things animal-related, we listen to Theo. Because when our middle child was just six years old and madly into farms and all their creatures – he couldn’t care less about a tractor – he looked up at me with adorably wide blue eyes and announced: “Mummy, I love animals so I don’t want to eat them anymore.” And that was the end of that.
On talking to others, I learnt that I had friends who had wanted to be vegetarian as children back in the Eighties and Nineties – when gentle parenting was not even a futuristic dream – and their parents had shut down the idea. But how could I turn down such ethical and well-considered wishes from my son?
Secretly I felt guilty that we should all be a bit more Theo. I did make some conditions at the start: he would absolutely need to consume beans and vegetables, and he should consider fish every now and then. He agreed, and has never looked back.
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