Sunday morning in Brisbane and we went for a stroll to the University of Queensland for a campus-wide open house, largely designed to provide information for high-school students and their parents.

The animal science folks had a small petting zoo set up, featuring an echindna (right, exactly as shown). I asked the woman what kind of animal it was and she told me I wasn’t much of an Australian.

I said, no, I’m not, I’ve been here four days.

They also had a bunch of baby chicks (left, nice flip-flops), and one of the students thrust one at Sorenne to pet. I was at the stroller, or would have used my usual line: get that salmonella factory away from my kid.

And there were a couple of goats and a couple of cows in a fenced-in area. I didn’t see anyone pet them, probably because it was early and people were just streaming in.

I did however observe this kid (below, exactly as shown), chowing down on what they called Fairy Floss (cotton candy) while petting the chicks.

This was a small outfit, and the risk of disease transmission was probably low, but there were no signs encouraging handwashing, no handwashing facilities, no sanitizer or wipes. Nothing.

A table of petting zoo outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/petting-zoos-outbreaks.