I\u2019ve been to zoos many times and always enjoyed them but my memories are most influenced not by casual visions of great creatures from the wild but by two more somber observations.\u00a0 The first was about thirty years ago at the Sacramento Zoo where I watched a big cat \u2013 not like a lion or tiger but larger than a mountain lion.\u00a0 He was breathing heavily and salivating as he walked back and forth in his much too small cage.\u00a0 He never stopped, clawing to one side then the other, panting and drooling as he headed nowhere in a box straight to hell.\u00a0 I thought my god that\u2019s all he can do.\u00a0 That\u2019s all he\u2019ll ever have: a cramped cage surrounded by people having fun watching a solitary prisoner go crazy.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s be clear.\u00a0 That big cat was created with as much right to be free as you or I.\u00a0 He was born to run, and in his natural environment would\u2019ve done so much faster than any human ever will.\u00a0 We only run when we want, but we don\u2019t really have to.\u00a0 Running for survival is for mentally limited creatures, it is assumed.\u00a0 We bright but feeble people have therefore determined it\u2019s altogether proper and entertaining to put our physical superiors in cages.\u00a0 Not many of us have ever seriously questioned our right to do so.<\/p>\n
I certainly wasn\u2019t thinking about ethnical issues several years ago when I went with a group to a sanctuary in the parched mountains about seventy miles north of Los Angeles. \u00a0Sanctuaries, as the designation implies, are safe places for animals to live as much as possible like they would if they were free.\u00a0 The people who work there often do so because they love the animals.\u00a0 In this way they differ from many who work in zoos.\u00a0 But regardless of sentiment, the people are wardens, the animals are prisoners, and the prisoners are in cages.<\/p>\n
Our group at the sanctuary was most fascinated by the chimpanzees.\u00a0 They were distinctly alive, unlike the bears and big cats there who could\u2019ve been dead, sleeping in huge furry mounds that seemed not to move. \u00a0The chimpanzees, with arms much longer than their legs, were swinging through their large cages and looking at us and clapping hands so powerfully the explosions echoed throughout the region.\u00a0 And they were barking.\u00a0 That\u2019s the term some use.\u00a0 Others call it hooting and hollering.\u00a0 The chimps were hooting and barking loud enough to be heard a mile away.\u00a0 It takes extraordinarily strong animals to swing with ease \u2013 try it on a jungle gym sometime \u2013 and clap like cannon fire and bark as if through amplifiers at a rock concert.<\/p>\n
\u201cI bet those guys are pretty tough,\u201d I said to an employee.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh yeah, about five times stronger than humans,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow much do they weigh?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo more than one-fifty.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat would happen if they got out?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can control them.\u00a0 We understand them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what can they do as fighters?\u201d
\n\u201cThey\u2019d be unbelievable, punching, gouging, biting.\u00a0 They\u2019d be all over any man.\u201d<\/p>\n
No sane man wants a confrontation with a chimpanzee.\u00a0 St. James Davis definitely did not.\u00a0 Almost forty years ago in Tanzania he rescued a pocket-sized chimp from poachers who\u2019d killed his mother.\u00a0 He and his wife LaDonna called the little guy Moe and for thirty years raised him as a \u201cson,\u201d albeit a son who resided in a cage in their yard in West Covina east of Los Angeles.\u00a0 Moe was taught to dress himself and brush his teeth and make sandwiches, and also brought in some money with television and other public appearances.\u00a0 Moe and the Davises were local celebrities, but several years ago their profile changed when Moe severely bit the hand of a police officer trying to capture him after he got out of his cage.\u00a0 A year later Moe bit off the tip of a woman\u2019s finger.\u00a0 City authorities took the Davises to court.\u00a0 They countersued city employees who\u2019d come onto their property.\u00a0 The Davises won the trespassing case but lost the right to keep Moe at home.\u00a0 He was decreed a menace and forced to move to one sanctuary then another in Havilah thirty miles east of Bakersfield.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s more than three hundred miles round trip from West Covina to the dry canyon where Moe lived in his new cage, but distance did not deter the Davises.\u00a0 They loved to visit, and on March third made a special trip: it was Moe\u2019s thirty-ninth birthday, and they brought a cake. \u00a0Standing outside his cage, they were showing it to Moe, who doubtless has had many such treats.\u00a0 Watching this interaction from another cage were four chimpanzees \u2013 two adult males and two elderly females.\u00a0 Day to day we aren\u2019t certain what other people are thinking so we can\u2019t be sure how Buddy and Ollie, the two males, felt.\u00a0 Instead, we have to examine what is known about chimps.<\/p>\n
According to the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute, chimpanzees are our closest relatives, sharing almost nine-nine percent of human DNA.\u00a0 They are also quite intelligent and can learn American sign language then, without our help, teach the signs to the next generation.\u00a0 And their creativity with sign language sometimes soars into the poetic: they have referred to watermelons as \u201cdrink fruit\u201d and radishes as \u201ccry hot food\u201d and turkeys as \u201cbird meat.\u201d\u00a0 Those who live free in the wild know how to strip leaves from twigs and push them into holes where termites climb on and are extracted for consumption.\u00a0 Chimps also dig holes with sticks to ease access to ants.\u00a0 And, like us, they are formidable pharmacists.\u00a0 Deep in rain forests they have been discovered using \u201cformerly unknown plant species that have pharmaceutical uses ranging from antibiotics to antiviral agents.\u201d\u00a0 In addition to sharing some of our intellectual pursuits, chimpanzees are very territorial.\u00a0 Invade their space, watch out.\u00a0 Imagine a stranger surprising you in your living room.\u00a0 Chimps are also capable of intense jealously.\u00a0 And they have good memories, seldom forgetting a slight, real or imagined.<\/p>\n
St. James and LaDonna Davis were celebrating with Moe when Buddy and Ollie attacked.\u00a0 Authorities still have not determined, or at least have not acknowledged, how the chimps got out but to St. James it doesn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 The chimps had rushed up behind his wife and bit off her thumb.\u00a0 Then, with unsurpassed bravery and sacrifice, he pushed his wife aside and faced the chimps and tried to reason with them.\u00a0 After all, they were bright creatures he\u2019d known for forty years.\u00a0 Why are you doing this?\u00a0 We\u2019re your friends.\u00a0 We love you.\u00a0 Buddy knocked the man down and began chewing on his face.\u00a0 Ollie gnawed on a foot.\u00a0 LaDonna tried but couldn\u2019t deter the powerful creatures.\u00a0 The lady who runs the sanctuary called for her son-in-law who put his crying baby in a bedroom and ran out with a .45 revolver.\u00a0 He opened fire.\u00a0 The shots had no effect.\u00a0 He reloaded with stronger ammunition and killed Buddy.\u00a0 Ollie began dragging the maimed but still conscious victim down the road.\u00a0 The young man fired again and St. James Davis was released but almost dead.\u00a0 The 911 operator urged the people to apply towels to stop the bleeding and if they ran out of towels to use their shirts.\u00a0 Use whatever you have.<\/p>\n
The scene was horrible beyond imagination.\u00a0 The chimpanzees had ripped out one of Davis\u2019s eyes, torn off his nose, chewed off much of his cheeks and lips, bitten off all of his fingers on both hands, shredded his genitals, taken a chunk out of his buttocks, and mangled a foot. \u00a0As I write this he is still unconscious and in critical condition, and one sadly wonders what kind of life he will have if he survives.\u00a0 His wife says he has to be strong because she can\u2019t imagine living without him.<\/p>\n
Many families face nightmares.\u00a0 They\u2019re usually caused by disease or accidents.\u00a0 This was a crime.\u00a0 The male chimpanzees have already received their just punishment.\u00a0 But it is a punishment they could no more have understood than the reasons for their imprisonment.\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t have understood it any better than numerous chimps know why as babies they\u2019re taken from their mothers, thrust into the entertainment business, and often trained by being punched and kicked in the face. \u00a0They couldn\u2019t possibly know the mathematical details of their demise but may somehow sense the trend: there used to be five million chimpanzees yet now they number only about a hundred thousand. Like tigers and bears and elephants and giraffes and rhinos and the rest, they don\u2019t know what the hell they\u2019re doing in the strange and artificial world imposed on them.<\/p>\n
Now is an appropriate time to ask ourselves if we have long been committing crimes against other animals.\u00a0 Like all creatures, we have the right to capture and kill what we feel we have to eat.\u00a0 But do we have the right to put animals in cages for nothing more than our entertainment?\u00a0 \u00a0I say the suffering of animals in confinement is far greater than our enjoyment from their exhibition.\u00a0 Clean out the zoos.\u00a0 Return the animals to the wild.\u00a0 If they were born into captivity, let them try to make a home for themselves in their natural environment.\u00a0 If you want to see wild animals, watch TV or go on a safari.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve been to zoos many times and always enjoyed them but my memories are most influenced not by casual visions of great creatures from the wild but by two more somber observations.\u00a0 The first was about thirty years ago at the Sacramento Zoo where I watched a big cat \u2013 not like a lion or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,23],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n