What Type of Animal Would You Like to Attend Your Zoom Meeting?

A few months ago, I learned about an animal sanctuary called Sweet Farm that was offering a unique service during the pandemic: For a donation, you can have Sweet Farm arrange for one of their llamas to attend your Zoom meeting.

From a business perspective, I though this was brilliant. The sanctuary probably saw a huge drop in visitors this spring, so this is a way to help them stay afloat. And it’s such an odd, charming novelty–look at the screenshot below from the Sweet Farm website. It’s weird and wonderful. I would have already done this for my bi-weekly virtual game night if the llamas were available a little later in the evening.

I struggle to think of a better animal than a llama to join a Zoom call, as their glib facial expressions fit perfectly for meetings. But I’m sure there are some fun alternatives out there–can you think of some? I think it’s key that the animal is willing to hang out near the camera for the 10 minutes it’s on the call and stay awake. That narrows the field quite a bit. If a llama weren’t an option, I might go with an owl–they have a certain intensity would work well for this format.

4 thoughts on “What Type of Animal Would You Like to Attend Your Zoom Meeting?”

  1. Being a teacher, this semester I had PLENTY of animals joining my Zoom meetings with students. My own cats for instance, insisted that they be the center of attention during each and every one of my read alouds…I am not sure my students were paying attention to the book I was reading, because they were enamored. I also was able to just see a variety of my students’ pets instead of them. I think my favorite was my student with a bearded dragon. He had just the right mix of grumpy, tired of being here expression and cuteness that I would expect from a Zoom meeting being run instead of in class meetings. Although having a menagerie instead of a class some days definitely did lessen the tension and stress for students of the elearning experience, and I would definitely hire a llama to hang out with us if we need to continue the elearning experience next year.

    Reply
    • Nice! I recall hearing another teacher mention this too. 🙂 I very much like the idea of a bearded dragon attending game night.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Discover more from jameystegmaier.com

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue Reading