Zoo Class

Like today, this weekend was colder than a witch's teat in a brass brassiere. While I spent a bit more time outside the past couple days than I would have liked, I did spend some quality time indoors.

I set my alarm to wake me up on Saturday morning but, quite unsurprisingly, I woke up prior to the klaxon going off. I had a little time to enjoy coffee before a certain 7 year old would be placed in my care for the day. M, The Dulcinea's youngest son, was to be in my charge while she was away at class. I hastily made some eggless pancake batter (young Master M is allergic to ova) and got bacon frying as per his request. We ate and spent the morning drawing, painting, coloring, and making a bird house. The afternoon was to be spent at the cinema and, despite my nudges towards Arthur and the Invisibles, M decided that we should see Happy Feet. Why he should want to see a movie that takes place in Antarctica when we had Antarctic weather right outside the window is beyond me. We stopped at a PDQ to grab some treats as I wasn't going to spend my whole paycheck at the concessions stand. M had brought a couple Take 5 bars with him and he picked out a couple more things of candy. And when we got to the theatre, he wanted a slushie. I, being horrible at these things, OK'd the decent of his teeth into further decay.

After the film, we were discussing what to do next. M wanted to go to the zoo. He told me how his father would say that they'd go to the zoo only to not go and so it was off to the zoo. There were all of two cars in the lot when we arrived and, although there were some ice skaters off in the distance, nary a soul to be found wandering the place as we entered the gates. The primate exhibit was similarly devoid of homo sapiens. And the orangutan looked lonely. Maybe it wasn't, I'm not really sure. While I don't feel a great moral wrong is being perpetrated by shoving these poor creatures into enclosed spaces and letting us gawk at them, I do feel badly for them. We human tend to confine our own only when they exhibit severely anti-social behavior and/or to punish them but that orangutan was locked up for our amusement. No doubt Peter Singer would have something to say about speciesism.

I went from pondering the plights of my fellow primates to looking for something in the exhibit that explained how the creatures behind those glass walls are our cousins, evolutionary speaking. Maybe there was and I missed it but all I can recall was the odd display mentioning how chimpanzees are our closest genetic cousins but nothing really explaining just what that meant or why that should be. One wall had a mirror that was flanked by pictures of various primates so folks could look at themselves and then compare & contrast their visages with those of chimps, orangutans, &c. I thought this was really neat and looked around for something to tie it all together. We are told that humans and chimps are very similar genetically AND we can see how our faces have some common features with those of chimps AND we can watch videos in which we see primate behavior that has analogues in the human world AND…? And so where was a nice placard giving an elementary explanation of evolution and that explained all of the similarities above by noting that we humans and chimps have a common ancestor? There was all kinds of stuff about what chimps eat and how natural habitats are being destroyed and all of this was good stuff, but I was disappointed not to find anything which emphasized that the patron were primates too and how evolution worked.

We also went to the herpetarium. I cannot walk into one of these places without thinking about one of my film classes in which we read Noel Carroll's Philosophy of Horror. There's a whole chapter (if not more) devoted to why we innately find spiders, snakes, etc. to be so horrific. So, if you've ever wondered why people never find lobsters to be all cuddly, check out the book. At the herpetarium, I found one of the zoo's latest acquisitions, a timber rattler. I learned that it is one of two poisonous snakes to be found in our fair state with the other being the Eastern Massasauga. They are found only in the southwestern part of Wisconsin so we Madisonians are safe. The tropical rain forest building was nice, really nice. It was so hot and humid that I felt like taking my coat off. I learned that piranha really don't look so mean but perhaps this is because none of them bared their teeth at me. I think it was here that M asked me to lift him up so he could see a tarantula. That lasted for about 1 second because as soon as I had lifted him he started kicking to be put down again.

At first, M was pretty resistant to the cold and not unlike the polar bears who were hanging around outside probably quite happy that winter had finally arrived. M finally complained that his cheeks were getting cold so I gave him a brief lesson on how to use a scarf and we were off again. I wish I'd had a camera because, although we did eventually run into a couple people, the place was spectacularly deserted. There was just something about the scene of 3 bison standing around in near-seclusion with puffs of frozen breath streaming from their faces that screamed picture time. This was my first trek to the zoo in quite a while. There was lots of construction that had apparently been stopped in media res by the cold as a new children's zoo was awaiting further development. Being situated on the north shore of Lake Wingra and connected to the UW Arboretum, the zoo is a wonderful place. I visited the Milwaukee Zoo not too long ago and, although it is larger than the one here in Madison, something must be said for being able to look out onto a lake or to go next door and take a stroll in acres and acres of woodlands. Don't get me wrong, the Milwaukee Zoo is great. I'm just glad to have both.

In writing this, I've thought about what it must be like to run a zoo and how zoos have changed over the years. I'd imagine they started out as places for white folk to see animals from places where black folk lived. Heck, black people were even put on display, at times. I don't know when it happened, but at some point they moved beyond places where one could merely go to observe exotic wild beasts from strange lands and added the educational elements. Presumably around the time an Italian-American got dressed up like a Native American and shed a tear on television, zoos also became centers promoting conservation and environmental awareness. No doubt there is a book or thesis paper on the evolution of zoos over the past couple hundred years and I am tempted to try and find one.