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May 12, 2006

Bread and Hay

Before the Central Park Zoo moved its large animals to the Bronx, I often detoured through, taking notes. Here’s a passage written one afternoon many years ago.

First, naturally, I look for the lions. They’re indoors in their smelly jail–surly lion and lioness basking end-to-end, tails overlapping, hardly moving but for an occasional MGM yawn. They regard me askance out of slotted yellow eyes. Their cage faces five or six gorillas meditating in a row, who ignore the aping behavior of human visitors. One ape devours a stalk of celery like a pencil sharpener consuming pencils.

In the elephant house, Tina is pacing a double cage in slow figure-eights, silent as a cat. According to the sign, the Asian pachyderm is twenty-four years old. Her keeper comes in and sits on a metal chair. He is stooped and wrinkled, with a pointed yellowed moustache like vestigial tusks. Tina stops pacing. She plunks her trunk into her water tub and takes aim at me. The old man rasps intimately: “Tina. Tina. Put – the – water – back. Do not spray, Tina. Thatsa girl. Put it back.� She complies. The water streams out of her nose and back into the trough. The keeper rewards her with a bundle of hay, which she balefully observes as he stands to pitchfork it into the cell.

A second zookeeper appears, a thick man with thick black glasses and a dim expression. Communication with his colleague is devoid of eye contact and largely through mime. But he too has words with the elephant. “Gotta snack for ya, Tina,� he says, and produces a loaf of white bread, which he proffers two slices at a time.

Tina places the bread delicately in her mouth, like a girl sneaking a breath mint on a date. She does not seem to chew or swallow. When the first slices dissolve, Tina rakes in some hay–then beckons for more bread. Then more hay. Her heavy head swings from bread to hay and back again. The thick keeper says: “See that? She can’t make up her mind.� I reply, “I think she’s making herself bread-and-hay sandwiches.�

Then I go to see the polar bear. He’s hot in the 34-degree March breeze, padding in silent ferocity between a fiberglass glacier and thick black bars. Those pads are as big and black as frying pans, and seem to sweat. He confines his pacing to the very edge of his baked Alaskan stageset. So sad. His morose image stays with me as I turn away.

Beyond the zoo, the sky is a splotch, the sun a smudge and all the streets have a mean gleam. At home, for a long time, I write impressions and I draw images. I write, then draw, then write again, but without the calm precision of Tina consuming her bread and hay.

Posted by Jane on May 12, 2006 8:10 PM

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