Still, though, I can’t be sure if the zoo as I recall it was really like that. How can I put it? I sometimes feel that it’s too vivid, if you know what I mean....

Know your load. That’s rule numero uno in this business, which is why I make them count the penguins out in front of me one at a time. I’m not going to be the schmuck...

soft”; but, as it now has no call for vigor, and its fighting passions find no opportunity for display, such an animal is gradually approaching that condition which has brought Man, who is only an...

They can’t expect anyone to actually pay for a shirt that says, ‘I (picture of an elephant) the San Diego Zoo.’ What does that even mean?

I don’t mean to defend zoos. Close them all down if you want (and let us hope that what wildlife remains can survive in what is left of the natural world). I know zoos are...

I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign.

Despite all their flaws, zoos wake us up. They invite us to step outside our most basic assumptions. Offered for our contemplation, the animals remind us of nature’s impossibly varied schemes for survival, all the...

Zoo: An excellent lace to study the habits of human beings

Taken together, the narratives of how the animals ended up at Lowry Park revealed as much about Homo sapiens as they revealed about the animals themselves. The precise details—how and where each was born, how...

For several thousand years man has been in contact with animals whose character and habits have been deformed by domestication. He has ended by believing that he understands them. All he means by this is...

All zoos, even the most enlightened, are built upon the idea both beguiling and repellent—the notion that we can seek out the wildness of the world and behold its beauty, but that we must first...

Love is like a door knob that I’ve mistaken for a shower handle, and I’m trying to turn up the heat on our relationship, but the handle won’t turn and I’ve got shampoo in my...

Better to honor the pinch of fear than regret the punch of fang.

I had a dream about you. You were washing your car, and I was washing my horse. You thought I belonged in the 19th century, and I thought you belonged in a zoo. I wasn’t...

Zookeeper foible #1: Tendency to not equate fur and scale with fracture and scar.

I’d love to visit a zoo stocked with stuffed animals. Where would all the real animals be? Well, the real animals would be where they always are: in Congress.

I am the Zero Zoo. See the empty cage that is my heart. I’d like to imprison your love there.