At the Zoo

The Point Defiance Zoo sits on a hillside above Puget Sound. It’s almost like an amphitheater, when you stand at the top, there’s a stunning view towards Mount Rainier and across the water. The setting is grand, just grand, and if you go early on a Sunday morning like we did, there will be no crowds to spoil your enjoyment — of either the view or the critters.

Visiting a zoo leaves me fraught with ambivalence. On the one hand, I am positively giddy to get a good look at animals that I would not otherwise ever be able to get near. At one moment, I am three feet from a walrus nose, an another I am looking at the underside of a cloud leopard’s paw as he sprawls across a beam 20 feet about the ground. There is nothing but a sheet of glass between my hand and a polar bear’s massive claw, or a grid of chicken wire separating me and a pocket sized owl who stares right back at me with her round yellow eyes.

Boris and Kenneth, two of the polar bears, were rescued from a circus, where they’d been mistreated. One of the walruses is blind, she would not last in the wild, certainly. Sumatran tigers are critically endangered, but the zoo has successfully produced two adorable cubs. Asian elephants are also endangered; the zoo has a reputation for being a good home for “troubled” elephants. The animals look healthy, their enclosures are clean and well ventilated, the keepers, when we hear them do their talks, are knowledgeable and affectionate towards the critters.

But I watch the tiger pace, back and forth, back and forth. It is the first day the cubs are out, they are exactly as cute as you expect, meaning really, nothing should be that cute, and who can say if their mama is pacing because she’s nervous about her kids’ debut or something else. I watch the puffins — I LOVE puffins — waddle up a steep slope and then jump in tho the water as though they’re taking turns at the pool diving board. It looks like they’re playing, but maybe they’re frustrated. I watch the walrus swim slow lazy circles in the tank and then, lie on her belly at the “shore”, blowing, and she looks content, but what if she’s bored? The meerkats scramble along the edge of the glass and then they stand up on their hind legs and paw at it — are they curious or claustrophobic?

All this is ridiculous anthropomorphism — do walruses even have the ability to be bored? How would we know? The animals appear to be well cared for, they are active and bright eyed (save for the blind walrus) and even the hairy muskoxen look like they might have just had a nice brushing down. They’re either bred in captivity, like the tiger cubs and the snow leopards, or rescued from a worse fate,  like the polar bears and the elephants. I loved being at the zoo even while I was feeling bad for the arctic fox and the caged raven. I wanted, for the first time in a good long while, to be there on a press pass with a handler so I could ask all my crazy questions. I wanted to leave with the feeling that for these animals, the zoo was the right place to be.

Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium: Go early, pack a picnic. Even though the script is kind of hokey, the Wild Wonders show is entertaining. The kids in the audience loved it, they went nuts and I was gob-struck by the animals. Sit down front, where else are you going to get that close to an anteater, really? The zoo offers a AAA discount.

And hey, the best cartoon ever made about the zoo, Creature Comforts, is here.

Photos by Mr. NEV, my companion for zoo field trip and picnic day.