MIAMI (CBSMiami) – With a little help from Zoo Miami’s Ron Magill, 9-year-old Brayton Kuhse got a chance to feed Malcolm, a giraffe with a taste for carrots, and pose for pictures with Peggy, an 8,000-pound elephant.
“We’re doing one of my wishes, which was to go to a zoo and touch the animals. They set me up to do a lot of fun stuff,” said Brayton, who struggled through six months of chemotherapy to treat a brain tumor, which is now in remission.
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Brayton lives in Independence, Iowa, so he traveled a long way thanks to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
There was no waiting in line for Brayton. He zipped around the zoo in a golf cart and got up close and personal with the giraffes, elephants, chimps and reptiles.
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One of his favorite animals was a 580-pound tortoise named Goliath, who chomped on apples given to him by Brayton.
“This is one of the most special feelings we have at the zoo,” Magill said. “There’s nothing better than the feeling you get when you enhance and enrich the life of a child.”
“This was amazing,” said Brayton’s mother, Katie Kuhse. “It was his dream to do this and it was better than I could have hoped for.”
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Click here for more information on the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
