Justice For All

The Pittsburgh Zoo has been open to the public since 1898 thanks to the generous donation of $125,000.00. I'm sure real Pittsburgh buffs know or at least might have heard the name Christopher Magee, the founder of the zoo. A refresher for the yinzers who haven't caught up and we foreigners:

One man halves the debt of an entire Pittsburgh. 

One man generates thousands of jobs. 

One man then controls a city with his partner. 

One man takes piles of human being currency and ravages entire plots of land, uses materials from the earth to construct automobiles and building sites. 

How does one single man or one woman ever have such a giant impact on this earth? 

How do we consider what is "earned" and "fought for" when the question of ownership is so one-sided? 

A little boy named Maddox was mauled and eaten by a pack of African dogs in 2012 at the Pittsburgh Zoo. He was leaning over the rails, his mother trying to help him get a better view of the dogs. In terms of ownership, and devoid of our moralities, the dogs had this piece of meat fall into their hands. They had chance fall into their laps, just like luck falls into the hands of a human being. Just as a bloody medium rare steak splats onto our plates when we have enough money to order it. Who is to say what property is and what ownership is?

Obviously, we are.

And we've since removed those dogs from the settlement, only to replace them with cheetahs. It's just another motion we've got for handling iffy situations. The parents sued the zoo, which I truly don't understand, given the liability of holding your child over a banister. And the zoo just reached another part of a settlement last week, in which the zoo will pay the U. S. Department of Agriculture $4,550.00. 

Why?

Under the Animal Welfare Act, the only Federal law to protect the treatment of animals, we have decided that the USDA is due these finances. Statute §2157 section (d) states: "Any person, including any research facility, injured in its business or property by reason of a violation of this section may recover all actual and consequential damages sustained by such person and the cost of the suit including a reasonable attorney's fee." As my class has learned from our Eden Hall adventure, what the attorneys do with this lawsuit money in terms of agriculture is really up in the air.

What exactly does all this legislation do for the animals? I'm not entirely sure, though I'd like to think that the rationale behind this decision is: human beings fear losing money. And the fear of that loss prevents (most) people from harming animals, if not for just common human decency. Hurting an animal means losing money, simple.

I wonder then, if the animals would like more. They don't exactly see any part of this settlement, do they? Sometimes they get relocated rather than executed, so I guess that can be considered a small victory. 

I see Otis the alligator in his best tux, ready for court over being put in such a small bathtub of an exhibit for so many years. He's adorned with black shimmery satin on the lapels, a stripe of the same material sewn into a stripe on the pants, should he choose to be so decent to wear pants, too. He's holding an Alligator Welfare Act 2013 copyright LexisNexis in his right arm. A Venti cup of Starbucks caramel machiatto and a yellow legal pad in his right.

But that is probably not at all what any animal would like to see.

They're not into all the pageantry of the human world.

All this snow, do I even want to talk about it right now? There are stronger minds who have already written pages and books on it. I can't stomach it to consider snow again this week. I'm standing on a snowy bridge, nobody's bridge, and considering the legality, not the morality, of my previous blog thoughts of throwing a kid over the ropes to Otis. I have very unpopular opinions sometimes, but I think neither I nor the Animal Welfare Act have it right when it comes to justice for the animals. If that's even what we're really after.

Sea Kitty Maggie

An enchantment cast upon Pittsburgh made it warmer around here these last couple of days.

The lighter layer of snow melted and melded into the thicker colder layer of snow, forging that compact icy crisp- the kind of snow we use for snow forts and battles. I pine for at least one more snowball fight before I turn thirty. I've got a couple years, and I don't fear getting older at all. I've chosen thirty as it's a socially constructed landmark of "aging." I've chosen thirty because you can reverse all the damage you do only unto hitting thirty, then science says it's permanent.

I do fear surrendering to age and getting more and more accustomed to acting according to it. In a dozen more seasons, when it's the perfectly packed snow like this, will I be guarded and too mature to ask the frozen water to assemble the battalions, too brittle to lift it all up into one perfectly healthy sphere? 

My guess is for everyone to watch for snowballs this season as well as the next twelve. No one is safe. Snowballs are the white fluff of enchantment.

The maximum temperature this past week probably wasn't above 40°. I'm jealous of how much warmer it feels when you're around 220-660 pounds with a coarse, short fur coat. Once again, there are no people. I won't get to hit anyone with a snowball today, which I guess is better for everyone involved.

The mid-winter spell has temporarily fizzled out and this city's starting to dip back down into colder temperatures. There has been another dusting of snow along the paths and plants. Another batch of white-out to correct all our history. All our footprints erased, our daring sculptures censored, snow angels now with their wings clipped, as if they never flew in the first place. 

The first known zoo was just discovered in 2009. In Hierakonpolis, Egypt, a discovery of an ancient zoo, called a menagerie, dated 3,500 B.C., was found to have contained skeletons of hippos, hartebeests, elephants, baboons and wildcats. It's hard to believe we've been doing this for so long, through all these winters. Through King Ashur-bel-kala, Empress Tanki and King Wen of Zho, Solomon, Semiramis, Ashurbanipal, Alexander the Great and many more after that, we've trapped animals in cages and watched over them for more than 5,000 years. A menagerie symbolized power in aristocrats who kept wild expensive animals captive, and it wasn't until the 19th century that we decided calling something zoological in the name of science was perhaps somehow a nice form of public entertainment.

Just think, all those fucking winters.

I really hate hate hate the cold, and I could complain so much we'd run out of the earth's oxygen from all the hot air, but jump through all those years and the California sea lions seem to have never minded it. 

(Annoying the visitor's office has become 

a regular culture of my visits. The clerk told 

me the friendliest sea lions are Selina and 

Maggie, so out of guesswork and the sake 

of my people friend Maggie (and fun), I'll 

assume this sea lion was the one who 

shares the name.)

Sea Lion Maggie pauses again and again and I lean in forward a bit, just to get to know her a little better. I get as close as I can to the scratched glass wary of catching germs from the baby hand residue. I want to feel nearer Maggie. I want to share the same water so I can know and understand her even closer. I'd run my hand along her forehead, the color of my grandmother's grey hair, to see whether she's slimy or smooth. I'd tell her how jealous I am of those strong wiry whiskers, being outgrown by a beautiful bearded lady. Sea Lion Maggie's got the friendliest eyes with a yellowish brown tint. They remind me of a drop of the natural honey, the dark honey I buy from West Virginia hives, plopped on a ceramic plate. She blows bubbles out of her nose to help her swim around just as we do. I consider her mortality. I consider that she and I wouldn't be so different from each other swimming side by side, blowing bubbles from the same body of water. We sea kitties would live just about the same as large land kitties. We'd travel in packs called harems. Just like land lions, there'd be a male, a bull, who heads a groups of females, or cows. I'd have to fight a 660 pound sea lion to stick around. I could take him, or I could convince him to compromise. They work as a pack just as I work best as a pack, though I wish I were strong enough to be alone. We're both so utterly codependent. I understand too well the need for a tribe, for a colony. 

I imagine Sea Lion Maggie feels like those ultra-Mormon tribes, all those women packed around one husband, but she's blissfully ignorant of all that. She has no need for a religion. She might pray for more fish or a shiny red ball to play with. She might pray that her family stays safe and maybe she prays that life gets a little more exciting than swimming around that little pool all day. But she doesn't need it. I don't need it either. All we need is the love of meeting and knowing other beings. Our lifeblood is connection.

Maggie seems young, she seems to have a young spirit and I think we share that, too. I hope she doesn't change any of her behavior as she gets older and more cynical about it all. She's not trying to judge my actions or win me over, she's just watching, curious, and I wish I could ask her, if nothing else, to not let her curiosity fade away.

I wished I could ask or talk to Sea Lion Maggie about our history. I wanted to tell her what my beings have done to her beings and come to some sort of understanding. She'd learn about the zoological societies and the oldest zoo still in existence, Tiergarten Schöbrunn, in Vienna, Austria. I'd tell her about Ota Benga, a Mbuti pygmy part of the extensive list of human exhibits, and we'd philosophize about why keeping humans contained was suddenly not okay, yet containing animals presses forward in the name of "science." Maybe she wouldn't care, but I wanted to talk to her about anything at all, really, and maybe the feeling was mutual, as she swam to and fro returning to watch me every couple of minutes.

I stood there staring back at her, until it seemed inhuman to stay there any longer.

Otis Gator

Because it was just too damn cold, the Pittsburgh Zoo was not full of beautiful slobbering children attached to harnesses today. I mean... it was painfully frigid, where the air burned then stung in pecks of bristling cold. The gift shops were not hot from the too-many-human-body, less a meat sauna, more an empty structure. Pittsburgh is getting over a "polar vortex." There are no parents rolling their eyes at their babies in strollers who cry about spilled Dip-N-Dots or truncated time with the strong, popular, elegant tiger.

"Do you need a map?"
"No thanks!"

There was one mapless man who passed up the big-headed tiger without a second thought. He was wearing an oversized black parka, his eyes just showing below a fur hood. He sweat in winter weather as he barreled up and around the hill, past where the flamingos were in the summer. That's me, barreling.

One goal: visit Otis the alligator.

I was making my way to this gator and it was taking longer than usual. Frost had taken all the plant life, crab grass mostly, along the edges of the pavement walkway. The little brown plant fingers spilled out to the path in patches of dead hay and dirt. Little shapes and pictures were patterned within this crime scene, that feeling of maybe hallucinating, maybe living. People no doubt stepped on those little bits of life, just as I do, not thinking twice about whether a plant carries life or not. A lot of people do, though. They're awake to the Lifestream.

I started to feel a little weird at my remorse for these dead weeds, then I shut that shit out of my brain.

I realize again and again how much I wish I hadn't ignored the Latin flower words I'd ignored for nearly forever: biennial, biannual, perennials, bicentennials. One I know: annual. That one's easy enough. But why am I satisfied otherwise? There is just so much I don't know. I barely know milkweeds from marigolds. Pine from Cyprus. I know to go "bird by bird" as Anne Lamott says, but it'd probably help if I could name a bird. I guess there's always a start somewhere, sometime after I get to this alligator, wherever that may be.

After I passed a vacated Pepsi stand to my left, and about fifty more feet, and some fresh poo smell later, I took a closer look at the map with worn curled edges posted on the large brown building, pictures of elephants posted all over. I smelled elephant shit. As I pinpointed the "YOU ARE HERE" sticker, I realized I'm on the other side of the zoo, pretty far from Otis. Disappointing, but funny all the same. A sticker told me where to go.

Honestly, I don't remember a single time any map has made me happy, really. And that's all the wielder's fault, of course. A little more walking.

No doubt I looked a little crazy trudging around the zoo by myself with this glossy patterned book in my hand, and who cares, I love weirdos and I am a weirdo. I'd gotten my book from my best lady friend from high school. While it was a gorgeous book, sure, it was a little too pretty. Shiny and shimmery. The pages were empty and clean, sewn into a leather binding. Smelled nice, too.

It just didn't fit me.

 If I could make a notebook that was more me, it'd have large grey scales. The pages would have to be super crusty, and it'd have a flaky ribbon which broke every time you most needed it. It would reek. However, there would be a charm to this notebook, a little curl around the lip. If you looked at it just so, it would smile just like an alligator, and somehow everything would be fine.

I'd finally reached the right area only to find the sidewalk barricaded for renovations. I thought that it seemed a little strange to leave the animals unattended and block off that section of the zoo for no reason.

I don't suppose I need to tell you how quickly I climbed over the barrier. And of course, obvious to any mildly to moderately intelligent person, what I found was frozen lake devoid of Otis. Alligators live in the Southern parts of the United States and rare parts of Southern China for a reason. It's warm there. An undersized plastic alligator in Otis's stead smiled at me blankly.

I spent twenty minutes sitting with the rocks and listening to water trickle, slipping down the sides of rocks into the frozen water. Some large plants poked up out of the rubble like the remaining hairs from a man's balding scalp. Crackling and rustling in the distance made me pop up like a prairie dog to watch for staff members, predators. I wondered if the zoo staff would find me and tell me to get lost. I almost hoped that the alligator had adapted to his surroundings, hiding in camouflage behind a mossy rock or in the darker leaves, ready at any moment for guerrilla warfare.

I have reaffirmed this is going to be my spot. I had a journey at this zoo filled with smells, sights, feelings, powerful images, whatever. I didn't really get to reflect on those yet. Here I am, sitting on the cold pavement with my shiny shimmery book, thinking about a half-natural half-man-made construct for an alligator. Very urbanatural, isn't it? Otis seems to have been relocated from the glitz and glamour of having human beings chatter about his existence, at least when it's cold. Good for him.

At the skin of the ice, leaves which used to swim around were encased at its surface.

I wondered where someone had encased Otis.