Unplanned Urban Wildlife Habitat

She was a real beauty and appeared to be lost standing in my driveway, looking at me with those big brown eyes. I wondered if she needed directions, but before I could inquire, she scampered into the neighbor’s yard and—with a backward glance—disappeared into a small woodlot.

I have seen white-tailed deer in my yard before, but not very often and usually late at night. Even

though there are wooded areas nearby, my suburban neighborhood is dominated by a golf course and jam-packed with houses—most with fenced yards and many with swimming pools. It is not exactly ideal wildlife habitat but the number of wild animals that share my little corner of the world is rather astonishing.

I suppose most of the animals I see are just passing through, like the box turtles I have been seeing recently. Last week I had to stop my car while a lady, whose own car was parked in the middle of the road, tried to coax a turtle up and over the curb—without touching it. She carefully balanced the turtle on the end of her shoe and tried to scoot it up into the grass, but it kept slipping off of her foot. I was reaching for my door handle to go help her when another person got out of his car and came to the rescue. As the line of cars in both directions drove away, I wondered if the turtle would continue his slow march to safety or whether he might turn around and drop right back into the roadway.

I got a firsthand look at the problem the very next day when on my morning walk, I found another box turtle with his nose pressed against the curb and his front feet clawing at the concrete wall trying desperately to climb into someone’s lawn. It wasn’t going to happen, so I carried him to a nearby planted area and pointed him in the direction of the golf course. It wasn’t ideal, but at least he would have a chance—unlike the turtle that fell into my swimming pool a few days later. I had to scoop him out with the net.

And speaking of the swimming pool, what an animal trap that has turned out to be. The squirrels have figured out how to dangle from the edge by their hind legs and get a cool drink of water. Other critters like frogs, turtles, lizards, and a few snakes aren’t as adaptable. Once they fall in, they are not clever enough to find the ladder or the steps, even if that is how they entered in the first place.

A few weeks ago I heard a frantic call from my wife, who had been out for her afternoon swim. I rushed out and discovered that a baby armadillo had been on the bottom step of the ladder getting a drink and lost his balance. As humorous as it was to see an armadillo bobbing around in our swimming pool (they are excellent swimmers, that is how they have expanded their range so quickly), my wife grabbed the net and deposited him in the bushes with his buddies and they went scampering off.

For the most part, I enjoy sharing my yard with the local wildlife But every once in a while my patience is tested—like when the peaches disappeared off of our tree. Last week, our small tree was so laden with a dozen or so peaches that I had to place some boards under the branches to prop them up. They were beautiful—fuzzy, reddish orange, and plump. They were a little on the hard side so we were waiting for them to ripen. But we waited too long. A few days ago, they disappeared—every last one of them.

“It was the deer,” my wife said. Her evidence was the nibbled leaves on the branches that had once held the fruit—branches that were much too high off the ground to have been eaten by a rabbit. But what had the deer done with the peaches? Had she single-handedly eaten a dozen peaches, pits and all?

I don’t know what happened to the peaches, but everyone who knows my wife knows how seriously she takes her garden. If that deer knows what’s good for her, she will steer clear of my yard for a while. There’s a big, deep pond in my back yard and if she falls in I might not be able to save her.

Thelma the Wayward Mule

Thelma and me

There’s one in every crowd—even a crowd of mules. I’m talking about that individual who marches to her own drummer—who says: I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail.

I witnessed such an individual last week at the quail hunting plantation where I drive a wagon. The occasion was the annual meeting of the Georgia chapter of the Colonial Dames of America. The event was a historic preservation tour that brought them to view the plantation home designed by world famous architect, Edward Vason Jones.

It is worth noting that when hunting season ends on the last day of February, the animals take the summer off while the property managers are hard at work burning fields, clearing brush, and maintaining equipment. Since it is a private residence and a members-only facility, nobody comes on the property unless they have business there. When I arrived on the property last week, the horses and mules were grazing peacefully in their fifty acre pasture—peacefully, that is, until three large white tour busses followed by a small caravan of cars trundled down the dirt road in front of their pasture

I can only imagine what was going through their minds as the vehicles disgorged a hundred or so passengers. Maybe they thought all of these people came to see them—perhaps bringing food. It was quite a sight to see six mules and a dozen horses sprinting across the pasture to gather along the white wooden fence. It reminded me of when I was a kid and we heard the bells of the ice cream truck jingling through the neighborhood.

Thelma, looking for the way back to her pasture

I paid little notice, assuming that the guests would lose interest in a bunch of animals in favor of the historic house they had come to see. Imagine my surprise when I looked back and discovered that they had gathered around one of the mules who was grazing peacefully in the middle of the lawn. How had that happened? Had she jumped the fence? Not likely. Had someone left the gate open? Not according to a quick survey of the fence line.

The mule was one of the mules that pulls my wagon, my dependable pulling mule, Thelma. She gave me little trouble as I herded her back up the lane and through a gate that led back to the pasture. She even seemed—if I care to be anthropomorphic—glad to see me.

So, how did she get out? Well, that’s the interesting bit. According to several guests who witnessed it, when the other animals were trotting to the fence, Thelma separated herself and turned ninety degrees from the herd. She proceeded with purpose down the fence line away from the action and entered a grove of trees where the sturdy wooden fence becomes a tangle of metal posts and barbed wire—a section of fence that is apparently less than secure. Guests reported that when she emerged from the trees she was no longer in the pasture. She had decided to join the party.

How, I wonder, did she figure that out? How did she have the presence of mind to zig when the rest of the herd zagged? I can’t say, but it sure did make for some good theater. I wonder what made the greater impression on our guests from around the state, the architecture of Edward Vason Jones or the ingenuity of Thelma the wayward mule, who challenges us not to follow where the path may lead, but to go where there is no path and leave a trail.

As natural as life

Much of society, it seems, is disconnected from the source of our food. Deep down we know that if we eat meat, some animal had to provide that meat—but it is not something to be talked about in polite society.

This was illustrated recently when my wife, an elementary school librarian, was speaking to a first-grade class after reading a story about what animals eat. She explained the differences between carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores but when asked what category humans fall into, the students became confused.

Many did not realize that humans eat other animals—that when eating hamburger they are eating a cow or when consuming bacon they are eating a pig. This urban generation is being raised on shrink-wrapped food from the grocery store. I wondered if some parents might be upset that their children were being told otherwise.

Why the disconnect? Perhaps it is because we don’t want to think about the fact that animals are killed to supply our meat. We are content with the illusion.

This reminds me of the story (probably untrue, but a good story none-the-less) about a display presented by showman P. T. Barnum early in his career. It was called The Happy Family and it is said to have featured a lion, a tiger, a panther, and a lamb—all in the same cage. After the exhibition had been running for a while, a friend asked the showman how everything was going. “Oh, fairly well,” Barnum replied. “I’m going to make a permanent feature out of it, if the supply of lambs holds out.”

The guests I meet on my wagon are, for the most part, enthusiastic sportsmen. They love shooting the way some people love golf, even to the point of cheering the well places shot. Most of them are more like me than I ever suspected.

They are naturalists at heart. They may fly-in on private jets and carry shotguns that cost more than a new car, but they still marvel at the vultures that soar overhead, ask about the prescribed fire that maintains quail habitat, and get excited when a cooper’s hawk swoops in to steal one of their birds.

They are as knowledgeable about what quail eat as they are what size shotgun shell will bring them down and they believe in giving the birds a sporting chance to get away. Most will not shoot unless their target is well into the air and flapping madly in the opposite direction.

I am not a hunter. It’s not that I disapprove; it’s just that shooting guns and killing animals is not my thing. I have, however, seen lions in Africa kill an antelope. It is a different experience in person than it is on television. It is more visceral, more intense, and it helped me realize that it is perfectly natural for one animal to die in order to feed another.

It is more than a little ironic that in my retirement after a career working in zoos, where our goal was to extend the lives of animals, I find myself part of an operation that harvests (a polite euphemism for kills) hundreds of quail every month. My justification—if any is needed—is that death is as natural life itself.

The birds that are killed in our operation are dropped in a box on the wagon and placed on ice after each hunt. They are then cleaned, packaged, and frozen—ready for consumption by our guests. They are harvested at least as humanely as the billions of chickens who are slaughtered every year to provide our chicken nuggets, wings, and fingers.

Author, Temple Grandin, uses her autism and her expertise as an animal science professor at Colorado State University as a platform to advocate for the humane treatment of the livestock we slaughter for food. In her 2009 book Animals Make Us human, she suggests that our relationship with the animals we use for food should be mutually beneficial. If we are going to take animals for food, then we should provide those animals a good quality of life prior to that use.

I often wonder as I sit on my wagon and watch the hunters stalk the broomsedge and wiregrass hoping to flush another covey what this landscape would look like without quail hunters paying for its preservation. My guess is that the wide open, pine-wiregrass habitat would be swallowed up in a scrub oak forest. The quail, gopher tortoise, and other savanna-loving creatures would disappear.

Perhaps the people who oppose hunting as cruel and barbaric might see the end of hunting as a victory but, from where I sit on the wagon, it would be a hollow victory indeed.

Ode to Joy

A quail hunt, at least on the property where I work, is filled with pageantry. We arrive under the ancient live-oaks at the “big house” at precisely nine o’clock in the morning—two mule-drawn wagons with six or eight horses led by hunting guides in white vests. It is such an impressive sight that first time guests often stand on the porch and video the procession with their cell phones.

In all this pageantry—mules, horses, wagons, and guides—one individual is often singled out. She stands on the seat of the first wagon, as she has done for nearly a decade, and is clearly the star of the show. She is a thirty pound, chocolate brown English cocker named Joy.

To say I love dogs would be an understatement. Dogs have been a part of my life since the day I was born. My childhood dogs were yard-dogs that never came in the house but in those days children seldom went in the house either, except to eat or sleep. Dogs ran with us—or we ran with them.

In my adult life, my wife and I have always shared our home with one or two dogs as part of the family, and I still grieve for the ones that have passed. Maybe that is why I have such an affinity for the dogs in our hunting operation and why I love spending my workday with Joy on my lap.

Every morning, after we load guests and guns and we ride out to the hunting ground, the first order of business is to stop the wagon and get two dogs down. They are English pointers, muscular little short-haired dogs with names like Buck and Gabby, Bud and Pearl, and Ike and Dot.

They are taken out of the wagon in a male-female pair and positioned side by side in the

middle of the road, with a gentle tug on their collars and an equally gentle command to “whoa”. The control of the dog handler is impressive and must be the result of hours, weeks, and even years of training. The dogs stand still and look at their handler as he mounts his horse, listening for their release—a low whistle, not unlike the whistle of the bobwhite quail.

Once released, they run up and down the dirt roads and in and out of the grassy lanes. By all outward appearances, they are running aimlessly at a brisk lope—aimlessly, that is, until one of them catches the scent of quail in the thick grass. Then it looks like the dog has come to the end of some invisible leash. His head snaps toward the birds and his body jerks sideways. He remains immobile with head down and tail up. Our guide says “we’ve got a point up here.” The other dog is usually not nearby but when she sees a point, she will also fall into a less serious point, essentially honoring her partner.

It’s still a bit of a mystery to me, especially from my vantage point on the wagon, how the dog handler interprets the actions of the dogs. Is the dog pointing a covey or a single bird or a bird that was the morning meal for a hawk? Are both dogs on the same covey or are there in fact two coveys? This is the heart of the hunt—the dogs on point and the guide positioning the hunters; followed by the moment of truth when the birds fly, the guns boom, and the birds fall. This is when Joy, the little English cocker on the wagon seat next to me, stops whining and jumping around. She stands at full-alert and goes silent awaiting the dog handler’s call.

Most of the birds fall in an open area where they are easily picked up. Occasionally, however, a bird falls into the deep grass. That takes a little more looking, even when the hunter knows where his bird fell. After a few moments of fruitless searching, the call goes up from the guide as he looks back to the wagon and hollers, “JOY!”

Joy scrambles down the steps at the side of the wagon and navigates the lanes to where the hunters and guides await. The guide points and says “dead bird in here”, and Joy goes to work. She scrambles back and forth nose to the ground in ever shrinking circles until she homes-in on her target. Finally, she dives in and emerges with a bird in her mouth. She looks to the guide who says “wagon”, and back she comes to deliver the bird to me and turn her attention back to the action in the field.

This is clearly a highlight for the hunters and is the reason that after ten seasons Joy is, at least on our wagon, the star of the show. She is the enthusiastic magician pulling an invisible bird out the deep grass and bounding back to the wagon with her treasure. That, I suppose, is why Joy is the first one the hunters greet when they come out on the porch of the house in the morning and the last one to be touched with an affectionate pat on the head before they head in for drinks after the hunt. 

There is a tendency for people unfamiliar with their life to feel sorry for the dogs on a hunting plantation. They live in a kennel and only come out to train or to hunt. But not all dogs are bred to live in a house and sleep on a couch. Many were bred to guard property, pull sleds, or perform water rescue. The Jack Russell Terrier, for example is described as a “charming and affectionate” little dog, but it was developed in England over two hundred years ago for the not-so-charming job of hunting foxes. The hunting dogs I work with are bred to find, to point, and to retrieve birds. I don’t think Joy’s life will be better or she will be any “happier” when she retires to someone’s house and will never seek out another quail in the deep grass.

When the hunters come out in the morning and come directly to the wagon to rub Joy’s head, it is as if she is their talisman—a good luck charm that might hold magical properties. But if, as John Milton has suggested, luck is the residue of design, then luck will have little to do with the success of the day’s hunt. The pointers will point the birds and Joy will retrieve them—that much is certain. It is the skill of the hunters that is a little less certain. They will need to rely on quick reactions and straight shooting rather than the luck derived from petting their “lucky dog”. And no one will be happier with their success than Joy, as she lives out her name and trots out to help them find their lost birds.

Working on Mule Time

My mules will stand patiently in front of the wagon for hours every day with eyes forward but ears turned back awaiting my instructions. They will move a little and stop as the quail hunters move through the woods, all the while appearing oblivious to the shotguns blasts and the skittering dogs that run beneath them. All I need to do is rattle the reins and say a gentle “gitty up” for them to move and utter a “whoa” with a tug on the reins for them to stop. It all works like a machine until about four o’clock every afternoon. That is when Louise, the right-side mule, begins to act up whenever we stop. It starts with the toss of her head, progresses to the stomp of a foot, and culminates when she reaches over and tries to bite her partner, Thelma, on the neck. Thelma reacts by squealing and moving away—something that is difficult while harnessed to the wagon. I reach forward and flick Louise on the rump with my modified fishing rod and say a loud “Quit”. Both mules will stand still for a while, but after less than a minute Louise will toss her head and the process begins again.

I love my mules, but not in the late afternoon when I recall the thoughts of Harry S. Truman, who apparently knew a thing or two about mules when he said: My favorite animal is the mule. He has more horse sense than a horse. He knows when to stop eating – and he knows when to stop working. We are supposed to stop working every day at about 4:45 so we can take our guests back to the house for dinner. Louise, it appears, is on a different clock. She wants to stop working on her own time—which is apparently at about four o’clock.

Thelma and Louise are a couple of beautiful blondes with long ears, large rumps, and oversized personalities. Thelma stands stoically every morning while I place her in harness. Louise, on the other hand, will occasionally lift a hind hoof as I am brushing her and threaten to kick me into next week. There may be nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule, as Mark Twain suggested, but I am doing my best not to receive my first one.

Louise, left, and Thelma

When they are in-harness and ready to pull and I give the command to “gitty up”, Louise jerks forward to get the wagon started and that’s the only work she does all day. The rest of the time, it is Thelma’s harness that is taut from pulling and it is Thelma that arrives back at the barn at the end of the day covered in sweat. Louise is as fresh as a vine-ripened tomato—no sweat, no heavy breathing, and eager to get out to the pasture for her evening graze.

Thelma and Louise are about seventeen years old, which puts them in their prime in mule years. The mules on the other wagon are each twenty seven and, with a life expectancy of thirty years or more, are nearing the end of their wagon-pulling days. That is why we are breaking in some new mules—a couple of light grey, short-haired, seven year old males I have taken to calling Bert and Ernie.

When they are pulling the wagon, Bert works on my left and is the steady one—much like Thelma. Ernie, on the other hand, is skittish. He refuses to walk through the wagon shed where we park the wagons at the end of the day. When I attempt to drive through the open shed so I can park the wagon, he suspiciously eyeballs the coiled hose, the garbage can, and the pallet of supplies on our right side and he eases to his left pushing Bert out of line. I have to stop the wagon and have someone pull the mules forward and into position. One evening as we were driving in at the end of the day, we encountered a basketball-sized pile of Spanish moss lying in the middle of the road. The horses stepped over it without hesitation but Ernie saw it before I did and tilted his head, looking at it nervously. The nearer we got, the higher he raised his head until he began to push Bert to the left into the tall grass at the edge of the road. No amount of pressure on the reins could pull them back in line. Thankfully there were no trees or ditches in our new path and I was able to wrangle them back into the road when the “danger” was safely passed.

Bert and Ernie came in at different times so they are not a pair of pulling mules that can work

Ernie, left, and Bert

together—at least not yet. This is most evident when I ask them to “gitty up” and they pull sideways in different directions. If I am not careful, they will even begin to back up. Eventually, after a lot of persuasion on my part, one of them will jerk forward and another uncertain journey will begin.

I view us as a team, my mules and me, with the three of us doing our part. I need them to pull the wagon as much as they need me to guide them. I get paid to drive a wagon and they also get paid—in food, water, safety and a life more at ease in the pasture than occasionally pulling a wagon.

When all is going well, I suppose driving a mule wagon looks effortless as we glide peacefully through the fields. But there are times when I wonder if Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. had me in mind when he quipped, you will never appreciate the potentialities of the English language until you have heard a southern mule driver search the soul of a mule.

With Louise and the new boys, I have certainly used some colorful language when searching the soul of my mules—if there is a soul to search.

A peaceful pace

Being the driver of a mule-drawn wagon on a quail hunting plantation affords me plenty of time to think. Sometimes my thoughts are directed toward the job at hand—the mules, the horses, the dogs, and the hunters—and sometimes my thoughts are drawn to the conversations behind me on the wagon—conversations that I treat as confidential. And then there are the long periods of quiet that remind me of the quote often attributed to Winnie the Pooh author, A.A. Milne: “Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits…”.

At the end of every hunt, we have a fifteen or twenty minute ride back to the house. The dogs are back in the wagon and the retriever is lying on the seat beside me as I follow the horse riders. The only sound is the conversation of the guests, the jingle of the mule harnesses, and the occasional bobwhite quail whistling in the tall grass. The pace is slow enough for a person to walk and I have never heard a guest complain about the length of our ride. In fact, people often remark on how peaceful it is and how they can feel their blood pressure going down.

Our wagon is like an old fashioned covered wagon with its heavy wooden body and tall, spoked (albeit rubber-tired) wheels. It is not a stretch to imagine a time when this type of transportation was the norm. My Grandma Porter told me of her grandparent’s trip from the Florida panhandle to Nacogdoches, Texas on a covered wagon in the mid-1800’s—a trip of about six hundred miles. Her grandmother walked the entire trip behind the wagon knitting socks for the men-folk. According to Google Maps, I could drive that trip in just under ten hours. My great, great grandma’s walk, at about three miles an hour, would probably have taken several months.

I wonder what it would be like for me to drive to work in the mornings on my wagon. I would not need to worry about running into deer or hogs. I wouldn’t be checking my speedometer or gas gauge. Of course the drive would last about three hours instead of fifteen minutes. It would be like commuting from Albany to Atlanta—with no ITunes or satellite radio. With all of that time, I could solve a lot of the world’s problems.

The people who hunt with us are busy people. They spend plenty of time on their mobile phones making deals and staying in touch with their offices. I even had one guest suggest that we make the wagon a “mobile hotspot” so he would have better phone reception. But on the ride to the house at the end of the day, all that seems to change. The phones stay in their pockets as their conversations steer away from business and toward family, good times, and the beauty that surrounds them.

In his Zen Habits blog, author Leo Babauta offers us Ten Essential Rules for Slowing Down and Enjoying Life More. The first five are to do less, to be present, to disconnect, to focus on people, and to appreciate nature. That about covers the experience of spending twenty minutes on a mule wagon. It certainly gives me time to think about such things as how the dog handler controls the pointers with a whistle and a “whoa”, why the retriever races out to find a quail with such enthusiasm, and what—if anything—the mules are thinking about as they stand immobile awaiting my command to “gitty-up”. I’ll let you know when I work out some answers. In the meantime, I think I’ll just sits.

White people must oppose those who preach hate

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Albany Herald, EDITOR'S PICK - Aug 18, 2017 

https://goo.gl/fyVgn4   

I grew up in the segregated south to a poor family — but a family favored with what has come to be known as the power of whiteness.

My dad’s family goes back generations in south Alabama and the Florida panhandle. They probably even owned slaves. But, I can’t turn back the clock and undo the past.

Slavery was an abomination that ended in the United States 150 years ago. What really makes me sad is that we Southern whites found a way to keep slavery alive for another hundred years. I saw the evidence with my own eyes. I remember the “colored” restrooms and drinking fountains, and the “white only” waiting rooms and country clubs. It makes me uncomfortable to remember that it took heroic effort and bravery for African Americans to earn the rights that a free people should have had all along.

So, what heritage am I, as a white Southerner, allowed to be proud of?

I am proud of the people, both black and white, of my generation and older who are able to put all of that behind them and work together in friendship and brotherly love.

I am proud of a Southern heritage of politeness where we say hello to strangers on the street and we teach our youngsters to say “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir” to their elders.

I love it that we make Northerners uncomfortable when we move in for a hug.

And I am proud of my parent who in the 1970s, when the schools in St. Petersburg, Fla., were integrating, sent my younger brother to a high school that had been all-black for generations. While the rest of the white community was huffing in indignation, my parents had the courage to stand up to the “white-flight” that caused others to flee to the suburbs.

My brother was an athlete who excelled at football and basketball. He was the only white player on the football and basketball teams his junior year. That meant my parents were the only white faces in the stands.

I can be proud of my Southern heritage without being proud of everything my ancestors did. But my Southern heritage is complicated. It is a heritage of white folks versus black folks, and a heritage of Southern gentility alongside the ugliness of racism.

I can’t change who I am – a white, Southern male – and I can’t change the past, but I don’t need a Confederate battle flag or the statue of a Confederate general to remind me of who I am.

I know there are plenty of good, decent white people who are appalled by the message of the Neo-Nazis and white supremacists. But this issue is not going to be resolved by more marches and sit-ins by people of color. This particular brand of evil needs to be squashed by white people standing up to other white people and telling them they don’t speak for us.

As for me, I’ll write about it. I’ll shout about it. And, if need be, I’ll stand up against those who preach hatred. It just makes me sad that nearly 50 years after the death of Martin Luther King, we are still having this conversation. “Make America Great Again” rings kind of hollow right about now.

Animals & Money

Shares of SeaWorld Entertainment plunged 33% Wednesday after the company's earnings missed Wall Street expectations. The Orlando, Fla.-based company also conceded for the first time that attendance at its theme parks has been hurt by negative publicity concerning accusations by animal-rights activists that SeaWorld mistreats killer whales.

Latimes.com, August 13, 2014

In the fall of 1971, Busch Gardens Tampa won the prestigious Edward H. Bean Award in the mammal category for the first captive breeding of the roan antelope. The Bean Award was presented by the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums (currently known as the Association of Zoos and Aquariums – AZA) in recognition of a significant captive propagation effort that clearly enhanced the conservation of the species. The roan is a medium-sized, African antelope that stands about five feet at the shoulder and weighs-in at 5 or 6 hundred pounds. It is light brown all over with

Roan Antelope

the most distinctive markings being the black mask that covers most of the face. Ears are long and pointed, and horns are short, stout, and swept-back in a gentle backward arch. I was proud of the award, even though I had only worked at the Gardens for less than a month. I loved hoofed stock and this award, according to the criteria, was supposed to “demonstrate an exceptional institutional commitment”. So imagine my disappointment when it was announced the very next year that a new attraction was to swallow-up the roan antelope breeding pen. The section of the park known as "Stanleyville" opened in 1973 and was home to the park's first water ride, the Stanley Falls Flume. Animals, it appeared, would need to take a backseat to rides and other attractions as Busch Gardens faced some stiff competition up the road in Orlando where Walt Disney was opening his new Magic Kingdom.

In 1971, zoos were modest affairs, little better than the menageries of a century earlier. It is difficult to blame the planners at Busch Gardens for failing to appreciate their animal assets. For the next twenty years they chewed up animal areas and replaced them with rides, show arenas, and themed villages, but in the 1990’s things began to turn around. Zoos were thriving and building

Toledo Zoo Hippoquarium

innovative animal exhibits, like the Toledo Zoo’s hippo exhibit with underwater viewing. In 1992, Busch Gardens finally reversed course and opened the 3 acre Myombe Reserve as home to families of lowland gorillas and chimpanzees. In July of 1997, they opened the Edge of Africa, a section of the park where guests could walk through parts of the African veldt and get an up-close view of the animals, including underwater viewing of the hippos. Not to be outdone, Disney opened its newest theme park the very next year, spending what some reports claimed was a staggering one billion dollars on Disney's Animal Kingdom. The floodgates were open on zoo spending and zoos have not been the same since.

There are, it should be noted, more than one category when it comes to defining zoos and aquariums, most of which serve a local community. Large facilities, like SeaWorld, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and Busch Gardens, are tourist attractions. They spend lavishly on their animals, but they also have annual revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars. A January 2014 CNN report, for example, reported that “SeaWorld expects an estimated $1.46 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2013”. A single attraction, Antarctica: Empire of the Penguin, a first-of-its-kind motion-based, trackless dark ride, opened in 2013 with a reported price tag in excess of 40 million dollars.

Few zoo and aquarium projects can compare to that, but they are still spending some pretty impressive amounts for new animal exhibits. Detroit zoo announced its opening of a penguin exhibit in 2015 at $29.5 million, which is double the amount spent by the Kansas City Zoo on its Penguin Exhibit just two years earlier. In 2014 alone, as reported in the news media and on websites, we saw the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City open an African savanna at $16 million, the Indianapolis Zoo open its International Orangutan Center at $26 million, and the Columbus Zoo open its forty three acre Heart of Africa at $30 million.

Some attractions, like the Georgia Aquarium, are not quite theme park but are larger than a standard zoo or aquarium. Billing itself as “the world’s most magical aquarium”, the Georgia Aquarium officially opened its doors to the public on November 23, 2005. It claimed to feature more animals than any other aquarium in more than 10 million gallons of water, with more than 60 exhibits. Attracting more than 2 million visitors per year, it is an anchor for downtown Atlanta’s revitalization efforts and a benefit to both the city and the state. But with such an ambitious vision and an initial investment of over $200 million, the pressure on the Georgia Aquarium to succeed must be enormous. In fact, all zoos and aquariums are under pressure to generate revenue in every possible manner. Public food services are built into new animal areas, often with an after-hours catering component. Souvenir shops are strategically located near exits for those last minute purchases. Per capita spending is monitored down to the last penny and one zoo is even experimenting with something called “dynamic pricing” in which prices increase at peak times. Zoos and aquariums may be focused on conservation and education, but the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Government agencies that once supported zoos and aquariums are struggling financially and cutting back their funding of “quality of life” programs. Zoos and aquariums need to run like businesses or they won’t survive to do all of that good conservation work.

But Zoos and aquariums aren’t the only ones making money from the business of animals. The 2013 documentary movie Blackfish made a relatively modest $2 million at the box office and

was seen by 25 million viewers, although director Gabriela Cowperthwaite claims to have taken none of the profits. Both the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) report revenue in excess of $100 million per year, which makes animal charities comparable to children’s charities like the Boys and Girls Clubs and the Make A Wish Foundation at around $200 million and around $70 million in annual contributions respectively. Images of abused puppies and hungry children apparently elicit similar positive responses.

Money is, as always, both a blessing and a curse. Many zoos and aquariums are blessed with generous supporters and plenty money for capital improvements—at least for now—but they must continue to attract new visitors and generate more and more revenue to support their operations. The cost of doing business is increasing and, as new animal exhibits are added, it will only go up. Whether or not revenue can keep up with expenses remains to be seen but, as the Ringling Brothers Circus can attest, this can be a slippery slope.

Ringling Brothers circus is closing. What does that mean for zoos?

The Famed Ringling Brothers Circus is Closing. The headline caught me by surprise and it made me sad. I knew they had decided to discontinue their elephant act and figured their other animal shows would soon follow. But the other aspects of the circus—the acrobats, the human cannonballs, and the clowns—could continue to thrill audiences. Just look at the popularity of the Cirque du Soleil. But, according to forbes.com, circus attendance in the United States has dropped by an estimated 30% to 50% over the last twenty years. That, along with high operating costs, apparently made the modern circus an unsustainable business.

I suppose the animal rights activists (PETA and HSUS) can take a little credit. They protested and picketed mercilessly on behalf of the animals. And the circus shares the blame for dragging its feet on making improvements to its animal programs. While I am not convinced that circus life in inherently bad for animals, I do believe that circuses failed to recognize how passionately some people feel about animal welfare.

We are, I believe, in the midst of some significant cultural shifts—many of which were evident in the recent presidential election. How do we make sense of our collective feelings about women in politics, gay rights, the legalization of marijuana, immigration policies, and health care reform. Is the demise of the circus a reflection of a cultural shift away from a particular type of entertainment or is it simply a matter of economics—the travelling circus is too expensive to produce.

Over the same period that circuses have been declining zoos appear to have thrived, perhaps due to their aggressive programs of animal welfare and enrichment. Zoos have spent millions on large and innovative animal habitats, and they have made sure their constituents were invested in their programs.

All of this causes me to reflect on how the history of American zoos and circuses are intertwined. The traveling circus menagerie was the precursor to the modern American zoo, and circuses and zoos have coexisted and supported each other for more than a century. (See my blogs from July 2015.) Now, I wonder what the demise of the circus means for zoos. Are zoos doing enough to stave off extinction? In the coming weeks, I'll take a look.

A Gorilla Dies at the Cincinnati Zoo - Who is to Blame?

A few months ago, a zookeeper at the Palm Beach Zoo in Florida was killed by a tiger. The circumstances surrounding her death were not immediately forthcoming, but it was revealed early-on that zoo officials elected to tranquilize the animal rather than shoot it as it stood over the woman’s body. This resulted in a ten minute delay in allowing first responders to reach the woman. Condemnation of the zoo for not taking quicker action was furious. Fast forward a couple of months. A three-year-old boy falls into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati zoo and is dragged around for ten minutes by a four hundred pound, adult male gorilla. Zoo officials elected to shoot the animal rather than tranquilize it, in order to retrieve the child. Now people are criticizing this zoo for shooting to save a person and not attempting to tranquilize the animal. Zoos, it would appear, are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Who is to blame for the gorilla incident—the zoo, the parents, the child? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But here is what I do know. I worked with gorillas for forty years at three different zoos. Gorillas are gentle but unpredictable animals and they are immensely powerful. I have also seen hundreds of animals tranquilized and know how unreliable this can be. Tranquilizer guns are not nearly as accurate as rifles. A miss is not at all uncommon. Darts can misfire or an animal can pull out the dart before it injects a full dose. And an animal under stress can counteract the effects of the drug, even if it does receive the full dose. Attempting to tranquilize an animal can take an agonizingly long time, if it works at all.

It is a sad fact that, in today’s world, we find ourselves constantly second guessed and making decisions based on anticipated reactions on social and in mainstream media. I am sure the officials at the Cincinnati zoo made the right decision in saving that little boy, and I am also sure that they are shedding buckets of tears over their decision. To the zoo people who cared for him every day, that gorilla was part of their family—think about pulling the trigger on your own dog or cat.

So, what is the take away in all this? Maybe the zoo needs to beef-up its barriers. Maybe parents need to keep a close eye on their children when they enter a place where danger might lurk—like a public playground, a swimming pool, or a zoo. As for the little boy, there’s not much to be done about that. As the oldest of four boys with four sons and four grandsons of my own, I recall many times that, if I turned my back for a moment, someone would be too high up that tree or too far out in the lake—and we had the broken bones and stitches to prove it.

Ian Porter and gorilla 'Shani' (Toledo Zoo, 1992)

The sad fact is, accidents happen every day. Sometimes the results are tragic and often there is no one to blame. To quote one of my favorite children’s authors, Lemony Snicket, maybe it was just A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Strange Bedfellows: SeaWorld and HSUS are Partners

I am not sure what to make of this. It is the most significant and far-reaching animal welfare announcement in years. SeaWorld and the Humane Society of theUnited States (HSUS) are now partners, “working together as advocates and educators for the ocean and its animals”. The partnership follows Seaworld's decision to end its orca breeding program.

I have long been troubled by the keeping of orcas in captivity, so SeaWorld’s announcement that it will end its orca breeding program is welcome news. I suppose the animal rights lobby can claim a victory of sorts. I have always assumed HSUS was part of the consortium of animal rights organizations that opposed zoos, aquariums, and marine parks, but I can find no evidence of that on their website. Their main opposition, it would appear, is the use of animals like elephants, whales, and dolphins as entertainment.

Fortunately, this agreement appears to support what is good about SeaWorld and, by extension, the reputable zoos, aquariums, and marine parks. It includes collaboration and advocacy in the areas of wildlife conservation and the humane treatment of animals.

Nobody, however, should be surprised if HSUS continues to lobby against the practice of keeping whales & dolphins and apes & elephants in captivity at all. It is far better, I suppose, for us to be negotiating these issues as partners rather than as enemies, but I just can’t help but be suspicious that things are not as they appear to be. I am reminded of the apocryphal story about showman, P. T. Barnum.

Early in his career, the story goes, Barnum created an exhibit he called The Happy Family. The remarkable display consisted of a lion, a tiger, a panther, and a lamb all inhabiting the same cage. It was an amazing scene and when asked about his future plans for The Happy Family, he is said to have remarked that he would make it a permanent feature of his shows, “if the supply of lambs holds out”.

The Cecil Effect

People have been writing about "the Cecil effect" for several months, but I only came across the term in a recent article in the online UK news publication telegraph.co.uk written by Peta Thornycroft. I have already given my perspective on the killing of Cecil the lion by an American dentist last year in another blog I publish (On the Killing of Lions), so I am not going to rehash that here. But I am intrigued by the fact that the demise of a single animal is having such a lasting, and controversial, impact. 

Zimbabwe's Wildlife problem

According to Thornycroft, the outcry over the killing of Cecil the lion has caused other big game hunters to stay out of Zimbabwe where, as in many areas of the world, it is the hunters who support the economics of conservation. As a result, Zimbabwe's largest wildlife area, the Bubye Valley Conservancy, has an overpopulation of lions. Bubye's lions are decimating the populations of antelope and even reportedly attacking giraffe, cheetah, leopards, and wild dogs. As the area's top predator, their numbers will continue to expand unchecked unless humans step-in or until the food supply runs out and their own populations crash from starvation.

Contraception is not the answer

Some conservation proponents suggest that contraception is the answer, but this is hardly a workable solution. It would be too expensive and impractical to implement. Stopping breeding in any natural population is hardly the answer to a long-term, healthy population of animals. In the case of the Bubye Valley Conservancy, culling several hundred lions maybe the only solution.

Where are the "Animal Lovers", now?

Where are those animal loving protesters now? All of those people who were outraged, who wrote those angry posts, who picketed that dentist's office and tried to put him out of business. Their actions have placed hundreds of animals at risk. If they want to oppose hunters (and zoos) who support wildlife conservation with millions of dollars every year, they should be willing to step up and put their money where their mouths are.

Birth and Death at the Zoo

The two births at Chehaw WildAnimal Park caught my eye last week – a colobus monkey and an eland antelope. Zoo animal births are not an uncommon occurrence. Hundreds of animals are born at zoos around the world every week. But these two births were special to me because they occurred at my hometown zoo. I can go see these babies.

Unfortunately, deaths also occur at zoos. It is a byproduct of the circle of life. The Oklahoma City Zoo was touched last week by the death of a 37 year old Asian elephant named Chai. According to news reports, the elephant died unexpectedly and was the second to die at the zoo in the past six months. Chai became a bit of a celebrity last year when animal right activists unsuccessfully tried to block her transfer from the zoo in Seattle, insisting that she be sent to an elephant ‘sanctuary’ instead. Now these same people are railing against the Oklahoma City Zoo and calling for them to shut down their elephant program.

96 Elephants Every Day

The death of a couple of elephants at a U. S. zoo pales in comparison to what is happening every day in the wild. According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, in 2012 alone some 35,000 elephants were killed in Africa, which works out to an astonishing 96 animals killed every day. The death of three elephants made the news recently when a British helicopter pilot was shot out of the sky and killed trying to stop elephant poachers in Tanzania. 

The vast majority of these wild animals die lonely, unknown deaths. If not for zoos sounding the alarm, nobody would notice. Zoos raise money for conservation and fuel the public outcry over these senseless deaths. If we do away with zoos, as animal rights activists would have us do, then we would not know that a baby colobus monkey is snow-white when it is born, that a mother eland hides its newborn baby in the tall grass, or that the life expectancy of an Asian elephant is about 48 years.

A Glimmer of Hope

Do I get emotional about the birth of a colobus monkey or the death of an African elephant in the wild? Probably not. It is the animals in my hometown, my state, and my country that draw my attention. They inspire me to care. That is where I learn about the tragedy of elephant poaching and that colobus monkeys are one of many species threatened by the bushmeat trade in Africa. The value of zoos (and aquariums) is that they personalize wildlife, stirring our emotions, teaching us respect for other creatures, and creating young conservationists in the process. We tend to care about what we know and what we know is what we see around us, not what is occurring in some far off land. In Oklahoma City, they mourn the death of an elephant while in Albany, Georgia we celebrate new birth. In both of these instances we can find a glimmer of hope for wildlife under siege.