The San Diego Zoo and the One in Your Backyard

Though I’m always excited to go, there’s something deeply sad to me about visiting a zoo. Obviously, it’s the cages. That we’ve imprisoned these animals for our own amusement, no matter how pleasant we make their confines. The social animals, if given companionship, seem to take to it; it’s the long-ranging predators who seem the least like their wild selves, like we’ve jailed them. They’re the animals we fear most—and whose behavior we mimic, yet hide behind slaughterhouse doors—and perhaps we like seeing them caged, made lazy, and not so scary.

Three Killers Napping.

The mountain lion looks like we woke him from his nap. This summer, while riding my bike deep in the Pine Barrens, I met another rider who said that he saw one on the trail. There have been sightings of mountain lions in the east of Pennsylvania for decades, but never any proof. It usually turns out to be house cat, because humans are not good at judging size at distance. This even happened in California, where they have plenty of mountain lions.

But I am hopeful; I want the Tasmanian Marsupial Tiger, the thylacine, to not be extinct; and when some dude says he saw a cougar on the heavily overgrown bike trail, I want there to be a mountain lion. I rode high in the saddle and kept looking behind me, ever hopeful that a big cat would be stalking me. I was pretty sure my bicycle helmet would save me from its bite. Alas, the only bite I received was from a tick that Sarah removed from my leg. I should be grateful; I’ve seen videos of riders encountering a mama mountain lion and cubs, and it was harrowing. (I don’t know how those people keep recording.)

Some animals seem less bothered by their cages, like this gorilla. He strutted on over to watch the humans, and seemingly had made peace with his group’s predicament.

The birds don’t seem very happy about it. The flamingos manage to enjoy their ponds, but the California Condor looks depressed that they can’t soar. The Singaporean Black-Naped Oriole made do, calling its cage-mates.

The San Diego Zoo is one of the most popular in the country, and I enjoyed my visit, but began to wonder if every major metropolitan area needs to cage giraffes, elephants, lions, and various birds. Does it make us more likely to want to save them? Probably not. There’s a wildlife rescue in the Pine Barrens called Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge, who rescue and rehabilitate injured wildlife; the animals that can’t be released into the wild due to injuries or acclimation to human contact are well-kept as ambassadors and many of them can be seen in their enclosures if you visit. Maybe this is what zoos should become; I imagine there are enough orphaned elephants to go around, and the remaining polar bears will need somewhere to live once Arctic sea ice has gone the way of the Tasmanian Tiger. I kind of like what China does with “panda diplomacy”; not that I’m a fan of their government at all, but sending a couple pandas on world tour, instead of allowing every zoo that wants some to buy them, might be better for some animals.

That, and demanding that animals be exotic for us to care about them is privileged and unpatriotic. I have had a wonderful week in my suburban backyard, observing the hoarding behavior of a mated pair of Red-Bellied Woodpeckers, and a brief but thrilling visit from either a Cooper’s or a juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk (I’m not great at telling these apart.) The Woodpeckers are still at it; every day, they light in the tree above my shed and start calling, warning the House Finches and Dark-eyed Juncos that the big guns are coming to feed. After a good minute of harsh chirps, one of them lands closer, and looks again for predators. Only then will one of them land on the feeder and eat some seed—all the while peering both ways between bites like an anxious child crossing the street—and dig for a suet ball. Once they have one, they fly away immediately, to stash it in my neighbor’s loose aluminum siding, or another cache they have made.

As far as I’m concerned, they are as beautiful as anything I saw at the San Diego Zoo. Maybe I have savanna fatigue? I saw many wonderful animals there, but after visiting the Turtleback Zoo and the Cape May Zoo (which is free!) paying 75 bucks to see the same caged animals from Africa, and a very distant Giant Panda, I felt kind of zooed out. The panda photo was taken at full zoom from under a branch; visiting time was over for them, but Sarah spotted this one and we told other zoogoers¹ where to look.

Whereas, these hawk photos were taken in my yard, with my ass plopped on the concrete. Just prior to the bottom right photo, which puts its cloaca dead center, the hawk had expelled a squirt of “the kind of white Miss Trixie is,” for those who recall that great line from Paper Moon. The hawk had surprised me earlier, by swooping into my yard only a few feet from the ground; I didn’t see what it was chasing, but it failed to snag its meal, and flew away, leaving me gasping in wonder. I watched the woodpeckers at their feeder games for a while, before everything went quiet; the silence was only broken by a squirrel giving a high-pitched warning squeak. I saw a dark, broad-shouldered bulk in my neighbor’s tree, and I padded inside to get my camera.

I’ve photographed a hawk here before; it may even be the same one who visited in February! Cooper’s Hawks tend to prefer ambush attacks from hiding, so they will wait in a tree and look for unsuspecting prey. I wonder if they recognize that a squirrel cries mean they’ve been spotted? This one didn’t seem to care. It could be a juvenile Red-Tailed, and the rusty barred tail seems to confirm, but the head and chest look like a Cooper’s to me.

Earlier in the week, I saw a Red-Tailed Hawk flying over Timber Creek, so large that I first mistook it for a juvenile Bald Eagle. They’re migrating, and apparently my yard with its feeder is known as a greasy spoon not only for hummingbirds, songbirds, and woodpeckers, but also for hawks. It’s kind of wonderful, really. There’s a zoo in the backyard, if you’re lucky. And the animals are free.

1. Isn’t it a disgusting-looking word? Zoo+boogers, it looks like animal snot. I’ll have to ask

Benjamin Dreyer

his opionion of “zoogoer” sometime. (I bet he’d want me to use a hyphen to make it less ugly-looking.)