ANIMALS DON'T LKE CAGES

This all happened 35 years ago, maybe it was 1960
My six year old daughter had never been to a zoo and I had promised to take her to the one in Oakland. I keep my promises, or at least most of them.

We were in a festive mood as we started out. The Sunday sun was warm, the winds were light, and there was no traffic or bottlenecks on the freeway.

At the entrance, I paid $1.50 for parking and got a stub reading, “East Bay Zoological Society – Knowland Park.” We drove through a spacious park area studded with trees. Birds were singing. We sang right along with them.

The first animals we saw were Gibbons. They were going through their acrobatic paces in a large, round, wire-meshed enclosure, devoid of trees. The floor of this cage was cement, (unbelieveable). Furry paws were stretched out through the openings of the fence in efforts to catch the peanuts being offered.

My daughter turned to me and asked, “Daddy, are monkeys criminals.” “Of course not,” I replied with a smile.
“Then how come they put them in jail?” she countered.

That floored me. I hesitated, searching for the right words. There were no right words I realized suddenly. These animals had been free and now they were not, it was as simple as all that.

“Darling,” I finally said weakly, “They are brought here, along with all the other animals we are going to see, so people, humans like ourselves, can see them close up and to learn about them, to enjoy them.” I hated myself. I could see she was as dissatisfied with my answer as I was. We looked at each other. I felt guilty.

My guilt began to wash away as we boarded the miniature scenic railway and I was able to bask in the sunshine of my daughter’s smile. We laughed with pleasure on the ‘Sky Ferry’ advertised as, “An exciting panoramic view of the zoo.” It was delightful.
The ‘Carousel’ followed. We were having a ball. I began to think that all was right with the world. The feeling did not last.

When we came down to earth we saw three Dromedary camels from Central Asia. They stood disconsolately in a dirty shallow pond at the edge of their compound. Two sorry looking palm trees stood at attention in the center of the enclosure. We stopped smiling.

We saw a mixture of crime-free prisoners in a large, drab looking compound. There were vultures, cranes, gazelles, giraffes, kudus and elands. These creatures were miles away from their true homes in India, South America, and Africa. They stood unmoving. “They look sad,” Audrey said.

Was that a lion and his mate in their pen?
They may have been Kings at one time but looked anything but royal now. They sat, backs to their audience, silent, uncaring --- they had given up hope, dethroned forever.

Two huge alligators lay in a shallow pond about the size of a miniature fish tank. They were not going anywhere.

Chimpanzees, in a small, wire cage stared at us with lusterless eyes empty of all emotion.
A Pied Hornbill flew a distance of four feet from one perch to another in its constricted cage. Back and forth it flew, again and again.

We saw Sun Bears from Southeast Asia and Indonesia. “Smallest member of the bear family,” the legend read. They paced up and down on a cement floor. No forest leafy floor here, no trees, no relatives, no frolicking, and no foraging.

A pair of giant elephants were penned in an enclsure not much bigger than a prison cell. The life span of these pachyderms could be as high as sixty or seventy years. These noble creatures, these intelligent creatures, were in for a long life sentence.

“Where are the baby animals?” Audrey asked suddenly. We were not long in discovering that the zoo officials, in all their wisdom, had created a separate section for them, away from parents and the warmth and security they could offer them. “Shouldn’t they be with their moms and dads?” she persisted. “Yes they should,” I said with a sigh.
It was too much. We left. The day had turned gray.

As we drove home, I recited a little poem I made up on the spot.

Let animals live
Let animals roam
Let them live peacefully
In their natural home

Audrey clapped her hands. “Thank you,” I said.

When we are not killing them, skinning them and eating them. We put them in cages and just love them to death.