~BRONX ZOO CHECK~ By Coral Hull
(published here with permission)
~wildlife will escape the zoo~
if you become a zoo keeper, the wild that you think you keep will escape
you, in anyway it knows how, it will gnaw its own limbs off to be rid of
you, it will leave its own body behind in your hands in order to escape
you, that is what i found inside the prison of the bronx zoo, the thing
that was confined behind the bars was the physical body, it was what the
animal had left behind, the best that the animal could do, was to float
above its body that had become a cell within a cell, the zoo keeper is
left with a bad conscience, the public is left with uneasiness,
regardless of the publicity machine, wildlife will escape the zoo in any
way it knows how to, some animals had died and were free,
~the world of birds~
it was a bright blue backdrop, with no sky to think of, the world of
birds was like allowing a child to walk on a glass floor above a beach,
and watching them trying to dip their hands down into the waves, i
entered the world birds as a cry broke loose from a rainforest bird,
crying out to nothing but painted walls and a fake sky, it was as if
that cry had released the same cry in me, the cry kept up perpetually
and the same, until i knew that bird to be insane, the carmine bee eater
from tropical africa, sits beneath a skylight, in the wild it forages
while in flight, colonies may in hundreds and thousands, it rides large
animals in order to catch insects, inside the sunless world of birds,
another call echoes out beneath the skylight, the desperate trumpet of
montezuma oropendula from mexico, central america, in this sound my
despair, the future of us all,
~glowing scorpion~
there was this poor scorpion, huddled in a dirty corner of a glass tank,
with no sting left in it, when you pressed a button on the panel, the
tank rocks turned purple, and the scorpion that had been painted with
some substance glowed fluorescent green, to show us its miserable hiding
spot, i imagine that scorpions hate to be revealed, and there it was in
its dead little world, in his dead little tank, in its dead little
heart, bright fluorescent green at the touch of a button, courtesy of
the same country, that had lit up the niagara falls, turning it into
disney land,
~the elephant is so slow~
‘hadie, hadie ho, the great big elephant is so slow, she swings her
trunk from side to side, as she takes the children for a ride, hadie,
hadie hoe, the elephant is so slow,’ i was riding on the back of the
poor old elephant at taronga park zoo as a child, she had been made into
a childless mother, her calves sold off to other zoos, as a girl i had
been taught to sing that song in school, but I didn’t want to ride her,
and was frightened as she paced her endless circle, the zoo worker
gathering children, and placing them into a brightly painted wooden
float behind her ears, she spent her long life dragging her chains, this
feeling of tremendous anguish consumed me, it was bigger than my life
had been, a lot of the kids were crying when the ride had finished, the
adults saying, ‘never mind, did she frighten you did she?,’
~a world without animals~
a grey wolf looked through the broken planks, it could have smelt us
several snow covered kilometres away, now it was mangy and bored,
depressed, pacing, not fit for a domestic dog, not a wolf anymore,
imagine a world without animals, or where they only existed in zoos,
big, smart and sociable to nil, the bronx zoo is a zoo within a zoo,
squashed in between freeways and subways, the tenement buildings
creeping over the trees, neighbours peeking at animals from between the
gunshots and the curtains, it made them feel better about their own
lives, the concrete in the bear pit is painted white, to remind the
psychotic polar bear of the arctic, whilst it completely rejected the
artificial environment that had been made for it, there was a 4 month
old giraffe trying to eat the vegetation painted on the wall, this is a
world without animals, and we were meant to preserve our wildlife
memories by taking a photo there,
~the snow lions~
the bronx zoo doesn’t provide plastic lids or straws, because people
throw them at the animals, perhaps to get the animals’ attention or to
make contact, the woman who works in the cafeteria said, ‘they lost
several animals on plastic lids,’ i didn’t ask them what ones, it could
have been the so and so or the so and so, until i write about every
animal choking and the whole zoo chokes on plastic, the captive snow
lions cling to one another in their small world, as far as they are
concerned they are the last snow lions left on earth, they have never
heard the cry of another snow lion, or of another species that might
have shared their ecosystem, in their many years of sitting and pacing,
they twitch through nightmares that only a snow lion could have, we have
no chance in entering the minds of them, please do not throw coins or
plastic lids into the pool, there is nothing left to wish for,
~the reptile house~
the snake was out in the galaxy, a boelens python that lay wrapped
around itself, drugged from slow heat, its slight breath, its dead black
eye is something i’ll never forget, jen said, ‘it’s out of its body,’
the fluro light twinkled on its pupil that saw nothing from its capture
on, the chinese alligator was distressed, the common snapping turtle had
been facing black glass since 1995, caught in paul skill river, new
jersey, it was as excited as a child facing a wall, then there was the
cuban crocodile, known for its temper and jumping attacks, obviously he
didn’t want the little fountain the zoo had made him, ‘samantha’ was a
22 ft reticulated python ‘rescued’ from hide hunters, she had become a
breathing carpet, lastly the lace monitor and goanna, we wanted to take
them with us and let them go, back home in australia,
~what I saw was distress~
the bronx zoo calls itself the ‘wildlife conservation society,’ what I
saw was the work of a rich and unethical director, controller of the
dumb volunteers that didn’t seem to know any better, and a zoo keeper
that whistled louder than the birds, what i saw was a single polar bear
clearly disturbed, pacing, swaying, throwing its back legs out, like it
walked with a thorn in its heart, i saw two porcupines, one lying still
like an old rock painting, the other pacing, trying to walk into an
environment that wasn’t there, then battering its body against the wall,
in the worlds of darkness an egyptian fruitbat’s wings pierced several
fake branches, as it made another attempt to launch itself into orbit,
it fell from the air like a kite and scrambled,
~north american otter~
what i saw was an otter pacing, twirling in and out of the water, in
forgotten river number eights, crazy, frustrated, this too far gone for
too long north american, racing around a shape, circling its own neck,
reptilian mammal, in constant motion, in self combat and self defeat,
twisting with no relationship to anything, in comparison to the dreadful
comments from the public, ‘oh, look he’s showing off,’ what I saw was
two blue black pumas in a 10ft by 8ft glass enclosure, one sitting, the
other pacing a dead log, the log cat had completely lost it, as if
having now travelled so far out of its body, that i’m sure that if it
looked back down, it would be stunned to hear its own heart beating,
~mask of the ape~
imagine being locked in room with five people for the rest of your life,
i hung my head before the western low land gorilla, before clashing with
her eyes, at the edge of the enclosure, she said ‘there is no nature,’
and challenged me to tell her otherwise, her family had to urinate in
front of us, all I could say was ‘i’m sorry’, into her crazy mask and
slight sway, they look at you as if you are an absolute fuckwit, they
are unforgiving, sucking on straw, fed up, older ones showing the
stress, thirty five gorillas born in the bronx zoo since 1972, trees
disappear into the concrete, as a painted on community, with the wrong
shaped leaves, next door there is a grid floor for the white cheeked
gibbon, trunks that never grow and never die, moss coloured paint, the
zoo has its answers for everything, plastic plants, the smell of mildew,
and they knew, those staff, those volunteers, that sadistic zoo director
animal collector, he knew too,
More of Coral
Hull's work at: http://www.thylazine.org/
