TGIF: A Surprisingly Touching Trip To The Zoo

Hello and happy Friday, patrons! I just got back from a quick trip down to San Diego with Elliott as part of his Christmas gift. Last year (which is very strange to write as this took place only a few weeks ago) we were tossing around ideas of dream vacations and he mentioned that he’d love to go on a safari. I was surprised. That was the first time I’d ever heard him say that. He said he wanted to be up close with animals and then continued to mime himself holding, cuddling, and petting various animals. Yes, of course we had dabbled with the devil’s lettuce at this point, which weirdly only made his miming better. I sometimes forget that he went to school for zoology and that animals are near and dear to his heart. So, for Christmas, I got him the next best thing. A trip to the San Diego Zoo!

Baby steps.

We squeezed in this quick adventure before we find out what my radiation schedule will be sometime next week. And it’s incredible to note that I felt physically great going into this lil excursion. I booked the airBNB with cancellation insurance thinking I might have to bail if I wasn’t in good condition. Plus, I wouldn’t want the animals to see me struggling. How embarrassing.

But it all worked out! Yesterday we went to the zoo. And I completely forgot that zoos are crowded. Especially when you go to one of the biggest zoos in the country. As we drove over my naive brain genuinely had the thought

hmm, it’s a Thursday, maybe we’ll be one of the only people there.

WHAT A FOOL.

There are little things that pop up here and there that inform me that I’m slightly disconnected from the way the world works and me earnestly thinking the SAN DIEGO ZOO would be empty on a Thursday is one of them. We pulled into a parking lot immediately greeted by hundreds of people migrating in packs towards an entrance. Backpacks, strollers, wagons, stroller-wagon hybrids, and other cumbersome wheeled devices for transporting children were everywhere. My thoughts about it being awkwardly empty quickly changed to

Uh oh, I didn’t consider the children. Can I handle being around this many children?

Turns out the children were fine. It was actually kind of adorable to watch them squeal with excitement and gasp in terrified wonder over the animals. Meanwhile, Elliott and I practically regressed into two excitable, sticky-fingered kids as soon as we fumbled our way into the place and saw a blur of signs for orangutans, polar bears, beer, elephants, kettle corn, penguins, AND FUDGE. It had everything a 6 year old, or two late-30 somethings who’ve been sequestered in their house for months dealing with a medical issue, could want. It was a gentle sensory overload. So we floated towards the sign for the baboons and let the day begin.

Quick note, zoos are clearly not for everyone. I get that. I get the moral objective to animals in cages and the history of mistreatment. Even googling if the San Diego zoo is ethical yields positive and negative results, leaving the answer up to the individual. After reading a blog post from someone who wrote about deciding on the ethical nature of her own San Diego zoo trip back in February of 2023, she cited that the zoo is accredited, and “a legitimate 503c nonprofit organization whose mission is ‘saving species worldwide by uniting our expertise in animal care and conservation science with our dedication to inspiring passion for nature’.” She also explained that when deciding to visit a zoo you should look at what they’re actually doing. She wrote that on the zoo’s website they explained “the San Diego Zoo has successfully bred and reintroduced California Condors into the wild, a species that was on the verge of extinction. They have worked with fertility technology to undergo a groundbreaking breeding effort for the nearly extinct northern white rhino.”

So, there’s that.

I don’t know exactly where I stand on the overarching ethical nature of zoos. I think there are good zoos and bad zoos. And San Diego, at least for our quick excursion, was clean and vibrant with animals seemingly thriving and contented. More colloquially, the vibes weren’t off. At least to us. So, we enjoyed our experience. Did I wonder a handful of times if some of these animals would find more joy outside of their enclosures? Of course. But, on the other side of that, I felt hilariously connected to them, confined and contented in these habitats that offer just enough of what they needed to keep them healthy and happy. With handlers coming by on occasion and chucking out food, cleaning up their (literal) shit, and managing whatever else they needed. With every new animal we saw lounging leisurely or licking themselves shamelessly I thought

Same. Me. It me. I feel that. Get it girl. Yeah, I know that itches.

Then I thought

Hmmm…you could say Elliott and I have been operating a one animal human zoo for the last 5 months.

I’ve been healing in my house habitat with my husband handler dropping by on occasion to chuck me some food, clean up my shit*, and manage whatever else I needed. Well, well, well, look at us now walking around a metaphorical mirror of our own lived experience. And yes of course my edible had kicked in by now, which only enhanced the poetic nature of the actual nature I suddenly found myself more deeply connected to. Of course we could find ethical issues with these enclosures and want these animals to live freely because they’re reflections of our own desire for freedom. But before I could spin too rapidly down that rabbit hole of moral mind-fuckery, we got to the orangutans.

The orangutan habitat had cards with photos of each orangutan along with their name and some other info. I lol’d at how all females looked like they had baby bangs and blunt bobs and one was actually named Karen. The glass around their enclosure was crowded but we found a space to watch next to an elderly woman in a wheelchair. We kept “awwwing” at the baby orangutan as it rebelliously swang away from its mom after she tried to cuddle it close and give it food. Being a mother is so hard, I thought to myself while throwing handfuls of kettle corn in and around my mouth like an actual animal. Just then another baby-banged-blunt-bobbed older female, who was sitting by herself further away, started to look over in our direction. She got up and slowly began to move. A little hum of anxiety shot into my toes. She looked like she was coming towards us. The anxiety crawled up my legs and I felt a little like an audience member when a stand up puts their hands over their eyes to do crowd work.

OMG are you coming over here?

She was coming over here.

Is she looking at me? I think she’s looking at me.

The nerves were in my stomach as I cronched on fistfuls of sweet corn.

She probably knows I laughed at her little bangs.

Cronch, cronch, cronch. Kernels were getting lodged in my gums.

Oh my god, the chemo gave me a telepathic connection with animals and now Karen knows I laughed at her ridiculously tiny bangs.

I couldn’t tell if it was actually Karen herself, but this mature baby-banged lady b-lined across the enclosure and got all the way up to the glass before sitting directly in front of the woman in the wheelchair to our right. She put both of her hands on the glass and sat calmly looking at the elderly woman. The woman in the wheelchair smiled back warmly and a real moment was had as the rest of us quietly muttered in disbelief. I didn’t know exactly what was happening but I can only describe the moment as incredibly touching. And a relief. A developing telepathy with animals would have been, like, a huge burden for me. And maybe-Karen already knows her bangs are insane. She has to. She looks like Anna Wintour. A crowd quickly formed around the woman as children shoved their way through, practically licking the glass in front of maybe-Karen while their parents took pictures. I fumbled with my bag of popcorn to get this.

Why do I write about this story? I'm not entirely sure, other than it was very moving. Maybe it was a coincidence and maybe maybe-Karen was drawn to the woman's bright blue blanket. Maybe the glass on the enclosure keeps the animals from even seeing what's on the other side entirely. Regardless of the many ways to discount the moment, it still felt poignant. Like there was some intangible connection between the mature maybe-Karen with her teeny tiny bangs and this mature human woman in her wheelchair. Spy sees spy, or something like that. And if I wanna blast down that route of thought again, maybe that's part of the joy (and pain) of going to zoos. Catching glimpses of ourselves in the animals. Wanting the best for them, the way we want for ourselves. In hindsight, there's some sort of curious, poetic symbolism at play realizing that my first "trip" away from my own home/enclosure was to a zoo. What does it all mean? Right now I have no idea, but it's interesting! And I'm not even high!

That said, time to wrap things up. I'll leave this open ended zoo metaphor there for now. I hope you were able to have halfway decent first weeks of 2024. If not, I hope it doesn't deter you and you can reroute your momentum. Thanks for reading my internet diary. And no offense to anyone with baby bangs out there! Any negativity written about them is likely my own projection for not being able to pull them off. You and your incredibly short bangs that look like they were an accident or the consequence of a lost bet can go on with your bad selves! Thanks, as always, for being here! 💚G

*metaphorical shit of course. As we should all know by now, I clean up my own shit. Even on my hands and knees of a bathroom floor in the ER.