They're Starting To Run Us Over

I'm not a big fan of zoos. I don't hold it against people who are, and I certainly appreciate what zoos do in regards to providing a home for animals, some endangered, but ultimately zoos tend to depress the hell out of me.

The last visit to a zoo that I endured was to the San Francisco Zoo, so much concrete and lethargic, caged animals made me want to run home and chew on a pound of Paxil, wash it down with enough bottom shelf scotch to erase the taste of animal empathy. I try not to be a baby about things, but the last time friends had visited San Francisco and wanted to head out to the west end of the city and take in the zoo, I took a rain check that I never intended to cash. I just didn't think I could take it and feared going into some crowd screaming frenzy ala the end of some apocalyptic sci-fi film where I try to warn a collection of zoo zombies that the animals are not happy.

I read this in a news story a couple of weeks ago:

An orangutan escaped from a Taiwanese zoo and terrified patrons at a nearby restaurant Wednesday, overturning picnic tables and motorbikes and forcing terrified diners to cower inside the eatery.

Awesome. A primate took it upon himself to charge on out of there, I imagine humming the simian version Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive", and wreaking havoc. It makes me laugh to imagine this, not so much for the animal comeuppance, but for the idea of an orangutan turning over picnic tables and knocking over a row of motorcycles in that clichéd domino sort of way. But more than anything, it's imagining dozens of yelling, wide mouthed city dwellers being forced into a restaurant while Clyde from Every Which Way But Loose taunted them outside the window.

The angry ape was eventually subdued via tranquilizer dart (which frankly is way overused in this sort of wild animal in the midst of humans scenario) and taken away in the scoop of a bulldozer, allowing a bunch of middle management drones to flee a noodle house, vowing never to speak of this again.

Oh, and to make the story just a tad more tragicomic, at this same zoo six weeks prior, an alligator decided to liberate a veterinarian of his arm.

This is either quite possibly the worst zoo ever, or the first shots of the coming Animal Wars.


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: The Wrens' cover of They Might Be Giants' "They'll Need A Crane" is doing good things for me.