Animal Crackers

God is really only another artist, he made the elephant, giraffe and cat. He has no real style but keeps trying new ideas.

Pablo Picasso
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While living in New York City I belonged to a small group called The Birthday Club. We celebrated each other's birthdays in an unusual way. Whoever had a birthday would throw a party for the other members. It usually involved an event, an excursion boat trip. a drive out into the country, a day at the beach and so forth. Since it was a small group it didn't cost the birthday celebrant much. One day the fellow having the birthday packed a picnic lunch and took us all to the Bronx Zoo.

The Bronx Zoo, officially known as the New York Zoological Garden, was one of the vanguard zoos to create natural environments for the animals. The creatures there live in their natural element as much as possible and are well cared for.

I'm still not sure I know what the fascination is for looking at animals, but since millions of people do it all over the world there is obviously some attraction beyond simple curiosity.

We saw the elephants and the giraffes. We saw the bats and the moles, so dark in their subterranean burrows you could hardly see them. We went through the primate area where I had a conversation with a young gorilla which I've written about somewhere. We saw the big birds who sit up on their perches and occasionally spread their wings, a magnificent sight resembling a small living aircraft. The small birds are not confined to their areas but can fly out and up and down the hall over people's heads if they want to, and visit each other. We saw the butterflies and the reptiles, the wolves and walking birds. One of the emus came right up to his fence and stared me right in the eye. I don't know what he wanted but maybe his was just curious. Humans, after all, are the oddest creatures in the world.

Finally we settled down to have our picnic lunch next to a field where young baboons were chasing each other around.

At one point in our visit we came upon a field of tigers. One of them was on a rock ledge pacing back and forth, back and forth. He never left the ledge. I asked one of the keepers about him and was told that the tiger and been a performing animal, a circus cat, and he had spent most of his life in a cage where it was his habit to pace back and forth. He hadn't yet learned that he could jump off the ledge and roam in the field. To me that was the most interesting thing I saw that day.

Am I just pacing back and forth in my habitual, orthodox mental cage unwilling to roam the field and discover new ideas?

DB - The Vagabond
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SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)

In your opinion what is the most amazing thing that could happen during this decade? Make it as outrageous as you want but keep it within the realm of what you consider a possibility.

15 responses so far.

Answers will be published the first day of Summer.

Thank you.

dbdacoba@aol.com

DB - The Vagabond
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