Cages.

My recent visit to a Zoo turned horrible.  I am not a zoo person and I knew I wouldn’t feel right in there, but I wasn’t ready to see what I saw there.

He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him
More than to the visionary his cell:
His stride is wildernesses of freedom:
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come.

                                                    Ted Hughes “Jaguar”

This poem echoed in my head when I was standing in front of a hyena. But it was the exact opposite of what the poet felt when he was in a similar situation.

What the hyena is going through looks like pure torture to me. I don’t see the Stride as wilderness of freedom. Craziness of imprisonment is what I see. Pessimist or Realist but I like to bring the negative or the blunt truth out in the open. A cage is “no cage to him?” But it is!

 Notice Boards and Placards everywhere

Don’t Tease the Animals          Don’t shout at the animals

 There was an ape which resembled Gollum of Lord of the Rings .

Its deformity, odd appearance made the crowd go wild. They cheered when it looked at them. It didn’t want their attention. It didn’t want them there. The animal looked deeply disturbed. At one point the ape threw a stone at the crowd and instead of getting the message the crowd was Wowed by it. Knowing nothing it did would make the ‘evolved’ species understand, the animal walked away.  My spirit was broken seeing all this. And the crowd which looked really happy and satisfied moved to the next cage craving for more.

Not all animals were kept in cages. But that doesn’t give any relief, as a small piece of land with deep pits around it and high fences can’t be seen as a better option. A bear looked highly perturbed, slightly schizophrenic scratching the wall with bobbling head. One consolation was that it had another bear in the enclosure.

Most apes were kept alone. The boards with their name and other details portray a happy family.

 It was heart wrenching to see them just sitting there with a blank look and an empty heart. There was no symptom of pain or suffering or eagerness to leave, what I saw was plain numbness.

The Aviary looked beautiful with all the big, tall trees. But all the birds could do was merely look at the trees from inside the wire fence around them.

A fancy separate section for the Snakes repelled the fragile souls.  It does need courage to see the poor animals kept that way.  Nine feet cobras in what looked like a cupboard.

 

And the funniest thing, the stupidest – what I saw in an Anaconda’s cage. Man thinks he’s making the cage ‘home’ for the animal and paints the walls with Green plants!