Weblog
06/11/01 04:10 PM: Zoo
I look at the “Nation” section of today’s newspaper and see two AP stories entitled “Newspaper editor stable after attack by dragon” and “Elephant knocks over baby stroller before recapture.” Phil Bronstein, executive editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, had his foot bitten by a Komodo dragon while on a private tour of the Los Angeles Zoo with his wife, Sharon Stone. He was apparently let into the Komodo dragon’s cage. The story says he “always wanted to see a Komodo dragon up close.” All I can say is, you get what you deserve. According to the second story, “An elephant escaped from a bathing area at the Denver Zoo. . . .” Well, I wrote a letter to the editor.
To the editor:
A look at the June 11 edition of The Citizen reveals two similar stories about zoos–right on the same page. “Newspaper editor stable after attack by dragon.” “Elephant knocks over baby stroller before recapture.” The headlines catch your attention, don’t they? There must be something wrong with these vicious animals!
But try to think about what really happened. If you’re smart, you don’t try to get up close and personal with something that can snap your leg in half with a sweep of its tail. Especially if it has been taken from its natural habitat and put on display in a cage. I hear that makes them angry.
And a three-ton elephant that got out of its pen didn’t want to go back in. Imagine that!
If you were locked in your bedroom 24 hours a day, wouldn’t you want to get out? If a stranger came up to you and started gawking, how would you react?
Remember the CBS show Big Brother? Me neither. Apparently, people aren’t interested in watching other people sit around in one place. Why does this strange phenomenon suddenly become noteworthy when the ones being caged in and watched are “wild animal?”
[End]
I didn’t have room to elaborate, as letters are supposed to be confined to 200 words. But it is plain to see that the very idea of the “zoo” is absurd and demoralizing to the captive animals. What could be better on a hot summer day than to pay to see large animals sweating, laying in their own feces, with neither the energy nor the desire to move. I mean, where do they have to go? The other side of their concrete “habitat?” Also, the elephant was apparently there to “perform.” As if the zoo weren’t bad enough, they’re turning it into a circus.
