3 July 04
Distant Cousins
Numenius and I took a trip to the Sacramento Zoo today to do some sketching. If you don’t mind an audience (human), it’s a great place to sketch; the animals are used to having people around and sit still. Actually, they sit in a torpitude that only prolonged incarceration can bring.
This sketch is of a female orangutan that picked up a piece of fabric and draped it over her head not unlike the chadors I saw when I was in Iran. She looked right at me, a suffering buddha. I was almost too distraught to notice the children around us, yelling “monkey, over here!” or older children yelling “where’s the wrench”? I got fatigued quite quickly after this.
A creature that can gaze at us like this—it knows. It knows us. It knew me.
- Zoos distress me way too much to even go near them. Pet shops, too, especially here in Japan where very often they sell endangered species (saw a fennec fox in a tiny cage once, I nearly broke down crying in the store) and there is nothing I can do, because the government is in on it. I realize the importance of zoos, but I just can’t bear to watch animals that are supposed to out in the wild, free, pacing in front of bars or surrounded by hordes of ignorant, gawking people. The only zoo that ever eased my heart a little was Singapore where it is you who is in a cage (albeit an illusion, of course) and the animals run free around you.— butuki 4. July 2004, 10:35 Link
- I agree with you Butuki, I too find zoos very distressing and hadnt been near one for a long long time for just this reason. But when we were in China last year, in Bejing, I really wanted to see the Panda. I have worn a WWF Panda medalion for over thirty years in hope of that one day all animals on this planet would be saved from excintion and protected from loosing their natural habitats ect. I also thought very naively that zoos maybe had improved since I had last visited one. I couldnt have been more wrong. Concrete and bars was all that existed. We never saw the Panda. We dont know where they were and we couldnt find anyone to ask. But we saw other bears. Brown ones, and black ones. They had very small enclosures and nothing but concrete and bars. One bear was standing and rocking , just rocking and staring desperately out and I swore with tears in his eyes. He or she probably did only this for hours on end day after day year after year. His face still haunts me today and there is nothing I can do to save this bear, to let him free to live the life all wild animals deserve to live.— Jennifer 5. July 2004, 06:15 Link
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