Vacation Chronicles: Trauma at the Zoo

"I am a free spirit...either admire me from the ground or fly with me...but don't ever try to cage me." --author Unknown

I sat on a bench in front of the gorilla enclosure, tears streaming down my face. I'd been sucking up my tempestuous emotions all morning because I didn't want to ruin the day for my daughters, but the place for the gorillas pushed me over the edge. It looked cramped and small and nothing like documentaries I'd seen of places where gorillas live in the wild, although there are few of them left on our planet. Who cries at the zoo except over-heated, overtired toddlers in need of a nap? Me! "It's way too small! It doesn't even look like their natural habitat! Wild animals are supposed to live in the wild! They can't be happy in there! Humans suck--we destroy their home and why? Because we can!" On and on those thoughts had been dancing around in my brain since we'd walked through the front gates of the San Diego Zoo. I'd been here once when I was a child, but I barely remembered the experience. Now here I was with my own children having a meltdown because seeing the animals in cages depressed me, outraged me, and made me cry.

My oldest daughter, who was ten at the time, quietly came and sat next to me, leaning her little body into me to comfort us both. My youngest got up on my lap. "Why are you crying, Mama?" she wanted to know, as she wiped the tears from my cheeks. I hugged her to me. "Well, baby, it makes me sad to see the gorillas all cooped up in a cage. I want them to be free," I explained. "But if they were free, we couldn't see them, could we?" she inquired. "We couldn't, no. But then they would be happier, so it would be okay," I told her. As I watched her little expressive face mull that over, I wondered if somewhere in there she was plotting an animal jail break. I wasn't sure I'd be opposed to such drastic measures, but I knew my husband wouldn't go for it. He stood in the shade watching us and waiting to see if we would forgo the rest of the zoo tour or tough it out. "What do you think, girls...should we stay or go?" I asked them. "Whatever you want to do is okay with me, Mama," Hannah weighed in. I turned to the little one. "Let's go see more," she said. "Maybe we'll learn how to help them be free," she declared smartly! I smiled at her. In truth, that answer was the perfect one and probably nailed the main purpose for zoos around the world...education. But like any other lessons we learn in life, often there is a cost and sometimes it's a doozy! The hope is that the price will be worth it if it helps us to live "free". As for the animals living in the wild, hopefully mankind won't push them to extinction due to our own greed and foolishness. I believe they certainly have as much right to live here as we do.

*Image from www.sandiegodealsandsteals.com.

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