Some zoos are really big, so big that it’s almost impossible to see every single animal in one day.

That’s the case in today’s story, and an aunt taking a bunch of kids to the zoo does not want to spend the whole day there.

She thinks she has a clever plan, but it turns out that the kids have an even more clever plan!

Let’s see how the story plays out…

No, we are not seeing every attraction at the zoo!

I’m going to keep this story short and to the point.

Several years ago, I want to say early to mid 2010s, my aunt gathered my sister, myself, and her children so we could all go to the Brookfield zoo.

For those of you who don’t know, this zoo is a key attraction if you’re visiting the Chicago land area.

It is also absolutely massive.

Her aunt had a plan.

You can spend all day in this zoo and still not see everything.

With this in mind, my aunt made it explicitly clear that we were not going to walk across this entire zoo.

She said we were each allowed to pick one attraction to see and that was it.

All right, fine by us.

The kids had a plan.

Now, here’s something you need to know about each of us in the kids crew at the time.

I’m the oldest of all the cousins, so I had some degree of influence over the others.

Additionally, for children, we were all extremely clever.

We had to be, we’re from a very large, sarcastic and, witty family.

As I would have been in my pre-teen to early teen years back then, our plan of attack fell on me.

A plan that we all ended up agreeing on.

Her aunt didn’t catch on to the plan until it was too late!

Once we got to the zoo, we each announced an attraction that we wish to see.

I wanted to see the desert house, one of the cousins wanted to see the aquarium, one wanted to see the wolves, another wanted to see the bears, and our final wanted to see the bat house.

My poor Aunt.

She didn’t realize it until after we’d already seen the bats and we’re walking away from the aquarium that we had planned our attack perfectly.

The kids thought it was hilarious!

To her credit, she commended us on this, as there was no way she was going to get us a stop laughing long enough to punish us.

We arrived back at the original meeting point a lot later than expected.

When our aunt had to explain what happened to my parents, we all bursted out laughing all over again.

Ten years later, she still laughs about this day at the zoo.

It has to have been nearly 10 years since I did that, if my math checks out, and I still find myself chuckling about it to this day.

Next time I head back to the Chicagoland area, I’m going to have to gather up my cousins again so we can enjoy another great day at the zoo.

We can laugh about our brilliant plan once again, and probably give the hyenas a run for their money in the giggle department.

The aunt really should’ve looked at the zoo map before agreeing to the kids’ plan!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

This reader didn’t understand the story’s malicious compliance.

This reader shares a guess at the malicious compliance.

Here are some details about the Brookfield zoo…

This person knew exactly what was going to happen.

Another person who knows the Brookfield zoo well agrees that the plan was perfect!

The kids knew exactly what they were doing!

You’ve gotta love the smarts.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.