Concrete Jungle

About 4 years ago, when I was a senior in high school, I was in a play called "Words, Words, Words." It was a 3 person play in which our characters were chimpanzees whose personas were modeled after the authors, Milton, Swift and Kafka. (Which in and of itself seems like an interesting study in anthropomorphism, but on with the story) In order to act like more realistic chimps on stage, our director decided to take us to the Milwaukee County Zoo for an observation session. At the height of my vegetarian/animal rights phase I was already troubled by this, but I decided to go in as an optimist.

Zoos have always been a confusing place for me and even now, I am not really sure how I feel about them. When I was a kid, I had a really hard time looking in to the concrete elephant and hippo cages and not getting upset. Perhaps this ultimately factored into my PETA phase? But as we were walking around the zoo, I was beginning to feel a little better. I mean, the people that work here and care for these animals have to be compassionate right? Some of the exhibits looked better than I remembered and the animals seemed happy for the most part.

But then we got to the monkey house, specially the indoor bonobo exhibit. As soon as I looked into the cage I started to feel a bit uneasy. Something about the concrete trees and fake painted walls seemed disturbing to me. Everything in the the habitat just seemed so fake, so human. I have a really distinct memory of standing there with my cast-mates and simply feeling sad. The monkeys themselves didn't seem unhappy, but rather unamused, accustomed to our grins, points and stares. Climbing through their concrete jungle, never knowing what they are missing.

I've been back to the zoo since then and haven't had a such strong reaction but something sticks out to me about that day.

There was something about that particular exhibit that had such a strange effect on me. I felt sympathy and pity for them, I realized what a show all these animals lives often become. While they may blissfully swing through their man-made trees, its hard not to think of the real habitats they are modeled after and the wild monkeys swinging in them.