The Furious Spinner

My sister Michelle sent me this article about the Detroit Zoo sending their elephants to a refuge. The director decided it was inhumane to keep the elephants in such close quarters when in the wild they usually wander about 30 miles a day. They will probably go to the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. Another zoo director, when asked what he thought of this, said something like, "yeah, but, who cares if it's inhumane; it’s more important that people get to gape at them!” I am paraphrasing. Slightly. This remark reminds me of some of the reactions of people to the torture of Iraqi prisoners. "Yeah, but, we need the information." (For one thing, experts say torture does not produce good intelligence—although I wonder how they determined this factoid.) But I digress.

I went to the Detroit Zoo once almost thirty years ago. I think I was with my father, my oldest sister, and her son—but I can't remember for sure. What I do remember is seeing a tiger pacing in her cage. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. I wondered why people could not see how distressed she was. Then I went downstairs in some building to see the gorilla. He was sitting in a cage on a concrete floor. His eyes were brown, slightly watery, and they looked so much like human eyes. Because of this, I could not ignore our very real connection to these animals, and I wondered how I would feel sitting in that cage. (Not that it is any better to cage and torture an animal who is nothing like us.) I had never before seen a being who was more lost or miserable.

I've never been to a zoo since then. Years ago I wrote a book called A Vagabond for Genesis, about the end of the world due to a plague. Many homeless people survived the plague, and one of the first things they did was release the animals from the zoo in Portland. Lions, tigers, and bears wandered all over the city.

Holding any living being against its will is cruel, I believe. I have even wondered if it is cruel to have house plants. As I water mine or dust their leaves, I talk to them and ask if they like their homes. Unfortunately, I apparently don't speak their language because I haven't heard a yeah, nay, or are you nuts, girl.

Thanks for the article, Michelle.

Mario offers us this miniature poem, originally published in EDGZ #4 Summer/Fall 2002. Thanks, Mar.

Plato’s Menagerie

The ideal zoo
would be like
a certain theologian’s
concept of hell:
it exists
but it’s empty.

Copyright © 2002 by Mario Milosevic
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