Ever since I was young, I always loved animals. I enjoyed being around them at the fairgrounds where I could pet and even feed them. Although I had a strong love for them, I never really took care of one.

One day when I was nine years old, my parents told us that we were going to see my cousins in Senegal for the first time. But what I didn’t know was that they had a goat at their place. I remember looking around their house and noticing how it was so nice and spacious.

I didn’t find out that they had a pet goat until my cousins gave us a tour of their house. The goat lived on the terrace of the house and was locked in a cage. His name was Jerry. He had white fur and was four years old. In countries like Senegal, it’s common to keep animals like a goat, or even a sheep.

Most of my days in Senegal were spent hanging out at my aunt’s boutique. After lunch, we would either go visit someone or go back to my cousin’s house. On one particular day, my family and I went back to their house. Then I did the dumbest thing ever that you could imagine.

All of us cousins were at the top of the terrace hanging out and playing soccer when I decided to go pet Jerry. I kept opening and closing it when I opened the lock and let Jerry out of the cage. Yeah, it was stupid idea. But I honestly did it to scare my family.

It was a big mistake because as soon as the goat got out of the gate, he kept running around and even jumping. Like, I have never seen an animal jump like that. My eldest cousin yelled, “What did you do?” “Why would you do that?” etc. We all tried to put him back in his cage, but whatever we did to put him back, it never worked.

Then I had another idea (not a stupid one). There was food for Jerry, so I decided to feed him and walk him to the gate. Even though I was afraid to feed animals, I still managed to not get in trouble because I ended up putting Jerry back in his cage, and locked the gate.

See, you’d think this only happened once and that I learned my lesson, but after that I let Jerry out of his cage almost every day while I was staying at their house. One of my cousins would take him out of the cage and he would go crazy. What still shocks me was that none of us were caught by our parents.

So what I learned from this experience is to not joke around with animals. I or any one of my family members could have ended up getting hurt, so handle them with the proper care that they need.