The zoo experience was both serendipitous and bittersweet. The four of us arrived thirty minutes or so before the place was to close. We had the place to ourselves. The exhibits that normally charged a fee were all free. While the zookeepers went about their closing chores, we got in as much tiger-loving as we could. Even at their young ages, the baby tigers were already covered in an scratchy mat of orange, white, and black hair.
The older cats and the alligators however, were kept intentionally starved for the visitors’ entertainment. I felt an unsettling mixture of pity, the food we had shot down or dangled in the air might have been the only meals they were feed all day, and disgust, how could these incredible creatures be treated like sideshows.
It was not all cuddly-wuddly or doom-and-gloom though. The research branch of the zoo were making great strides in interspecies feeding.
