It’s all happening at the zoo
Writing by treason on Tuesday, 24 of May , 2005 at 9:33 pm
There have been stories coming out of Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo about the number of animal deaths at the facility. I haven’t been researching this story too much, because frankly I’m not sure I want to know all the details. Lincoln Park Zoo was my first zoo. We stopped going when I was a kid because human deaths started to outnumber animal deaths there. Then we left Chicago. But before we left, my mother wanted to make sure we got to absorb as much of the great city of Chicago as we could. She scored tickets for Bozo’s Circus, took us to the Loop and to museums, and then we made it to the big ‘un: Brookfield Zoo.
Brookfield was, at the time, a revolutionary concept in zoos. They made you think that they’d removed all the cages and animals were roaming the park as if they were out in nature. We went on a cold, overcast day. Most of the animals were invisible. They went into wherever it was to stay warm and comfortable, while we walked around in the cold looking for some trace of animal activity. I do remember there were cages. But what I remember most is the one display that was the most active. There must have been bars around them, but I can’t remember seeing them. All I remember was an enormous mound of rocks covered with baboons of all sizes. They were jumping from rock to rock and screeching at each other. I noticed that it looked like many of them were fighting over something. One baboon would grab an item away from the other, and that one would scream; the thief baboon would hold up his loot, then run off with it. Another baboon would steal it from him, and the cycle would continue. It was chaos.
Years later I would be sitting in a film class, getting ill. My professor showed us a film of horses running on a beach. Suddenly there were flames on the water, and the horses were still running. He asked the students to write down their impressions of the film. Majestic! Freedom! Power! Beauty!!! Then he asked me for mine. I’d filled an entire sheet of paper. Destruction. Annihilation. Torment. Torture. Incineration. Abuse. Cruelty. Pain. Suffering. Distress. Misery. Agony. Terror. Horror. He smiled. Then he explained to the students that these horses had been exposed to just that. The rest of the class completely misinterpreted what they’d seen. I probably got it right because I had witnessed the Brookfield baboons.
I was nine, but I was starting to get that same feeling I got reading Bradbury’s The October Game. (“Then…some idiot turned on the lights.”) I stood there, watching the people around me laughing and pointing at the animals. I started to realize, then, what the others were not seeing. I realized that what they were tearing from each other and running away with and eating was baby baboons.
Today I live in a city that boasts it has one of the greatest zoos in America. It’s true, I’ve been there once. I love animals, but I don’t do zoos. I don’t do pet shops, either. I should be in lockstep with PETA, who’s investigating the carnage at Lincoln Park, but I don’t agree with PETA because they are insane. PETA wouldn’t want me anyway. I keep pets and I eat meat. I’ve thought many times about becoming a vegetarian because I like animals and sometimes I feel guilty about eating them. But I also like leather. A lot. I live with dogs, so fabric sofas and car interiors just aren’t practical choices. It wouldn’t occur to me to raise a child or a pet as a vegetarian. It’s like religion. A very personal and important choice. Do what you feel is right, but keep me out of it, and I’ll do the same for you.
I admit my food choices are odd. I generally don’t eat veal. But I’ll down a bloody New York Strip in a heartbeat. I rarely eat lamb, even though my aunt prepared a lamb chop that I’ve remembered fondly ever since I was ten. She was Maltese and knew what to do with sheep. I can’t even begin to describe what that chop was like.
I like pigs very much. I think they’re fine animals. I still find it disturbing and I tear up when I see the old footage of pigs being incinerated during nuclear testing. But one of the greatest pleasures in life is cutting up bell peppers in assorted colors and cooking them with a skillet full of Italian sausage, then piling it all on top of sturdy Italian bread. No onions, please. Just peppers and sausage. But I do hate to think about where sausage comes from.
I used to love lobster. But when I was twelve, my mother decided to cook live ones. I can still eat lobster, but I think I can count on one hand how many times I’ve had it since we boiled those other ones to death. Those, we couldn’t eat, but our cats and dog, Andrew, were thrilled to take them off our hands. I love Indian food, but can’t eat goat. I know Vietnamese, Jamaicans, and Sicilians prepare it well, too, but I’ll pass. There’s just something about a goat I really like. But I also like chickens and eat them. I had catfish - Manny, Moe, and Jack - as pets, and no longer eat catfish. I’ve tried exotic meats including alligator. I don’t like game. Don’t crave frog legs, but squid is quite nice.
When I was eleven and new to the Pacific Ocean, my uncle and our old Italian neighbor, Mr. Mancini, took me fishing. The part I liked was the thermos full of coffee, sugar, and whiskey. The part I didn’t like was the eels. I’d thought that fish were pulled from the water, then died instantly, painlessly. Eels take forever to die. I sat with one, sobbed over it, petted it. Its skin felt just like human flesh, smooth and soft. Mr. Mancini prepared them with a special sauce and served them over (gak!) polenta. I couldn’t eat them. But today I’ll suck down unagi like there’s no tomorrow.
A former coworker went to a local natural foods store - home of the four-dollar tomato - and picked up a book about how animals are slaughtered for meat processing. She stopped eating meat that day. One afternoon I saw her in the office when she felt and looked close to death. She said she was going to go see a doctor. “No,” I said. “Go to the grocery store and buy yourself a steak.” I told her to quickly warm it on each side, then eat it - every bit. She said she couldn’t eat meat - especially rare meat. But, desperate, she took my advice and returned to work the next day restored to her former self. I believe in protein. Vegetarians claim there are meat substitutes, but truly there is no substitute for a Thanksgiving turkey or rare filet mignon. I don’t eat a lot of meat; in fact, I eat more peanut butter than anything else. It’s a long story, but I’ll tell it another time. The abbreviated version: When I was eight years old, William F. Buckley, Jr. became my hero. It was election year, 1968, and he and Gore Vidal were exchanging pleasantries - sort of - on television. It was the greatest thing I’d ever seen. What creative things they said about each other’s mothers!!!! All the while, Buckley looked amused and gnawed on his pen - completely in control - sort of. Anyway, after years and years of subscribing to National Review, how surprised was I to discover that forever I’d been eating a Buckley breakfast??? There’s peanut butter involved. Again, I digress.
PETA is determined to get to the bottom of these abuses at Lincoln Park. If it’s true that animals have suffered and died because of the zoo’s negligence, fine. Go for it, PETA. But can you please leave the rest of us alone? My views on hunting have changed dramatically over the last few years. When my sister was dating the person who would become her first husband, they took me to see Bambi (“Your mother can’t be with you anymore.”) There was a guy a few rows back who just burst out laughing after Bambi’s mother was executed. My sister told her boyfriend that he should do something to make the guy stop laughing. Beat him up! Kill him!!! Do something!!!! It was surreal, to say the least. But years later I graduated from a university that had a very good Wildlife Management program, and I mixed and mingled with those in that department and learned to accept that nature needed some managing. I wrote about forests and the need for pruning, if you recall. Well, animals need to be pruned, too, sometimes. Deaths from starvation and disease might be natural, but they are worse than a well-placed bullet. If a hunter is going to take the time, energy, and expense to go kill his own food, more power to him. I respect that. I’m a coward who likes my meat on a styrofoam slab, covered in plastic wrap.
I wear leather, but I don’t wear fur. But I respect the rights of those who do choose to wear it. I understand a person wanting to wear something beautiful. I choose leather because it’s practical - fur, for me, makes no sense. Besides, I have spent most of my life covered in cat and/or dog hair, so it’s almost like having fur anyway. What I don’t understand is PETA’s need to berate people who do wear fur and splash red paint on them. There is no point in destroying personal property. I can see that animals died, sacrificed themselves, to be made into a fashion item. In a weird way, wearing them is almost a tribute to that sacrifice. Splashing paint on their skins shows no respect. And chances are, more animals will die to replace the damaged fur. It’s odd thinking.
Treason number twenty-six: Animal rights has very little to do with the rights of animals.
I don’t own any fur, but if I did I would probably donate it to animal rescue. Do you know that these organizations use the fur to calm rescued baby animals? Interesting.
Category: Uncategorized
- Add this post to
- Del.icio.us -
- Digg -
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
