Maybe Zoo Animals Don’t Want Stay At Home Order To Ever End

Watching the news right now is terrifying. And it’s been terrifying for… years.

But it’s especially terrifying right now.

And they say we are all in this together but… no matter how many “feel good” stories the local news plays, it’s really difficult to feel good about humankind when watching the news.

Yeah, I watched the news again. Silly me.

I’m sure we will all find we have more in common than… oh forget it. I can’t even quote the positive thing.

Insert: Humanity. Hope. Goodness. Light. 

Anyways. In all the frustrating/horrifying stories, the news also featured a zookeeper who was complaining about her job as now the animals had no visitors and she just had to be with the animals on her own.

I think she was kidding… maybe?

I mean, I’m not a zookeeper, though I did work for a summer at Ochsners Zoo in my hometown and I did everything on my own, and so… I can’t understand what in the hell she was talking about.

I’m sure the animals are not missing the crowds.

I highly doubt the lion-bear is all “Oh wow. ANOTHER day without kids throwing shit at me and having dumb things shouted at me? I don’t know how I’m going to get through another day without… people…”

If I just got to go to work to feed and talk to ANIMALS and not have to interact with idiot tourists and the general public… I’d have an extra spring my step.

I’d burst into the monkey enclosure and yell, “HELLO, MONKEYS! HOW ARE YOU ON THIS BEAUTIFUL, LARGELY HUMANLESS DAY??????? Pepper… LOVE your hair today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I loved working at the small zoo in my hometown with only animals to talk to. In my short stint as Assistant Zookeeper, I laughed at the wolves when they’d pounce and growl and spontaneously stick their paws through the chain-link fence when I was weed-eating the grass trim. I also lectured them because they were going to accidentally get their wolf paws weed-eated right off one day.

And then where would we be.

In any case, I think a zookeeper’s life would have improved, thanks to this terrible human quarantine.

And less traffic getting to work!

Of course, maybe this is just me. I am very aware that it may just be me.

And, sure, zoos around the country were asking kids to write letters to the zoo animals… great PR.

Wonderful.

But I also highly doubt the giraffes give a flying fuck about what Timmy in Atlanta is doing today.

Also, this may be a stretch but I’d think the animals would prefer to hear how their human food-giver’s day is going.

Or maybe they don’t care. But I’d like to think they care a little about how Food-Giver #4 is feeling today.

Or maybe the zoos are in league with parents who are slowly losing their minds, trapped in small spaces with their children who are not in school, and they’re giving parents something new to scream at their kids:

“…ANTHONY OH MY GOD I LOVE YOU PLEASE WRITE TO THE ORANGUTAN NOW PLEASE I LOVE YOU SO MUCH DO IT NOW RIGHT NOW…”

Though orangutans were not involved in this zoo/parent pact and want nothing to do with it.

Also, the number of wild animals who are moving in on human public areas because of the decrease in human traffic is a bit stunning.

💔 My husband and I saw two dead wolves on the interstate the other day. This was very sad.

Though I can’t help but think, if I was an animal born in captivity and also kind of a dick, I’d be all “HEY WILD WOLF. CHECK IT OUT. THE HUMANS DELIVER ME FOOD. I’M ALSO NOT BEING RUN OVER ON THE HIGHWAY BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE TO GO ANYWHERE AS I AM S-E-T.”

The wolves will have no chance of taking over humankind if they can’t even get across the interstate successfully. Perhaps they should stick to the woods until they’re more familiar with urban environments and have developed a better strategy.

It was very sad.

Raccoons who long ago adapted to urban environments are also feeling edgy.

On a lighter note, I recently found a delightful little YouTube channel (Falconry and Me) featuring a lovely raven named Fable.

And Fable’s handler had to field all these questions people had posted and most of them could be summarized as

“Let the bird go.”

Uh, that raven had been born in captivity. She doesn’t know how to live in the wild. And have any of these people watched the Nature Channel?! It’s… awful out there.

It would be like picking up “we don’t lock our doors” small town kids and placing them in Gary, Indiana or taking “not sure what grass is” city kids and putting them down in Alaska with nothing but their skills and accumulated knowledge to keep them alive.

Neither situation is likely to turn out well.

Of course, you never know.

In any case, maybe it’s just because I’m unemployed and having seizures all the time which I’m not aware of but I would love to be a zookeeper in the midst of a human quarantine global pandemic.

Obviously, zoos need the public to pay admission which helps pay for the animals’ food and the grounds/enclosure maintenance and security and wages and veterinarians but, in the meantime, I bet the zoo animals are living it up and whoever that zookeeper is should perhaps cherish her quiet time with the lions.

Maybe that zookeeper doesn’t like feeling outnumbered by the animals.

But I guess now she’s feeling how the zoo animals feel on the annual Family Free Day and how introverts feel every single day during “regular times”.