Hangout Review
A Trip To The Zoo part 2
Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago
June 20, 2005
The Lincoln Park Zoo is located just north of downtown Chicago and barely west of Lake Michigan. A dreamy location to be sure. What’s more, the zoo is free. A free zoo! Sounds like the happiest shit in the world, right? It’s not.
I don’t like zoos very much, and the Lincoln Park Zoo is especially rank. I love animals, and I’m not really impressed with civilization’s obsession with caging them for display.
The only thing that I really like doing at the zoo is sitting in outdoor eating area and feeding bread to the seagulls and finches. The gulls are crazy bastards. They squawk and bicker and fight over the crust of anything. It’s fun to feed them because they go nuts and then they fly all around crapping on zoo-goers. The finches are little sweethearts. They are quiet and considerate, so it’s best to feed them on the sly, while the gulls are pecking at one another’s eyes. When I’m feeding the birds I often wonder if they know how good they’ve got it. While they cruise the skies, all of their animal compatriots are being held captive in musty, shit-strewn, faux-environments. Misery!
What good can be gleaned from watching a panther pace methodically in a 20x10 room? And the great apes! That’s like locking up southerners and feeding them pellets! Just kidding. But I do look at them like people. Gorillas, Chimpanzees and Orangutans are sentient beings. Gorillas are so fucking sensitive that small changes in their environment give them worry enough to cause bleeding ulcers. Look at their hands for fuck’s sake. They are hairy people, they don’t like being stared at by snotty-nosed children banging their clammy fists against the eight-inch glass. If you go the zoo often, you can get know the gorillas, you recognize them; they recognize you; you try apologizing to them in sign language for human beings’ short-sighted mania; you weep…
Even the lizards and fish at the zoo look depressed. The elephants! Their eyes are tiny, but they effuse misery as potent as any person’s. Locking them up is criminal.
The zoo’s last African Elephant, Wankie, died earlier this year, shortly after being moved to a zoo in Utah. Wankie was moved because elephants can’t live alone in zoos and her two companions, Tatima and Peaches, died not long before she did. Tatima died of tuberculosis in October of 2004 and Peaches was euthanized three months later--her death was attributed to old age. Wankie lay down while on route to Utah and wouldn‘t get up. Elephants can only lie down for a couple of hours before their immense weight begins crushing their organs.
"We know zoos are killing elephants," said RaeLeann Smith of In Defense Of Animals, regarding the deaths. "The lack of space causes captivity-induced ailments."
The Zoo President Kevin Bell’s response: "We felt very comfortable with the quality of care with our exhibit,"
The elephant enclosure at the Lincoln Park Zoo is totally empty now. While it’s sad to think about sickly elephants, the exhibit is far less depressing barren.
The Zoo President actually offered to leave his post as zoo president in in May, after three Francois Langur Monkeys died. That same month, a gibbon’s arm had to amputated, after it was broken while the monkey was reaching for food outside it‘s enclosure.
In the last seven months three gorillas and a camel have also died in the Zoo’s care. The zoo has said that he camel died from gastrointestinal problems, but it’s been alleged by PETA, who claims to have an inside source at the zoo, that the animal was left outside overnight. PETA has also said that they have information concerning the death of a lion cub that has not been acknowledged by the zoo.
Mayor Daley, who has called the zoo one of the city's "jewels," defended Bell and the zoo, saying there is no need for an investigation into zoo conditions.
At least we know their aardvarks are happy.
