San Francisco is My Home

11
Jan

More trouble at the Zoo

Author: kris, Category: Landmarks, News

This summer I was struck for about two weeks with a fierce craving for the Zoo. I kept having this daydream about being there in the early morning, before the heat wave really picked up, and listening to the monkeys chattering at each other. I kept meaning to go but never got around to it.

I’m sorry I didn’t go then, because I’m feeling less and less inclined to go now. It’s not just the recent tiger escape, which killed one man and wounded others, and it’s not just that a snow leopard and a polar bear both almost escaped in the past week alone, although all this helps of course. Then, too, there’s my increasing suspicion that the Zoo is maybe not the most humanitarian place — a suspicion that any sane person feels on entering even the best zoos, and which is doubled by the reports of their reactions to animal misbehavior. The word “fire hose” is being thrown around a lot. Plus the keepers seem to be violently disagreeing with the officials’ take on what’s going on.

Anyway, I don’t know enough of the facts to be fully condemning, but at least for now I don’t want to support the Zoo — or be attacked at the Zoo. Congratulations, journalistic fearmongering: you have worked your crazy magic on this girl.

Zoo officials promise this bear won’t try to eat you:

Photo courtesy of the SF Chronicle.