What spin are you going

July 27, 2002

What spin are you going to put on it? Perspective. Looking at the same object from different angles. Today we took the kids and my nieces to the Calgary Zoo. The zoo’s spin: education, preservation, research, entertainment. Another perspective? Looks like jail to me. No “habitat” is ever big enough because the context is completely corrupt. I can see their point when in comes to siberian tigers, elephants snow leopards and unruly individual predators that have come too close to human civilization but . . .let the rest go free. We watched a ruddy faced woman verbally harangue a sloth bear for moving out of frame as she was trying to take a “nice video” of him. What it smells like in the monkey house is not what these animals smell in the wild. Let the smell go free. Cooping them up has created rock festival porta toilet conditions for creatures that are used to the fresh air of a highly oxygenated jungle or the dry dusty perfume of the open bush veldt and Savannah. Living so close to your own shit is bad for anything. Why are elk, bison and wolves in there when they could be in beautiful national parks? Think of the glorious situation of the Yellowstone wolves. In 1995 they were reintroduced to complete the food chain by crowning it at the top. The large herbivorous mammals could now be kept in check and could go back to their natural state of having to be wary. These lottery winning Canadian gray wolves were plunked down like a high school football team with an open bar tab at the Playboy mansion. Party time for wolves. Smorgasbord. They thought they would grow to five packs by this time and there are at least double that number. I agree that zoos can serve to help the natural world but lets lose the movie that sells the popcorn. We don’t need to have these giant tourist zoos that have stacked the species to attract a crowd. “Calling all cars! Calling all cars! The animals have escaped from the city zoo and are making their way down Main Street. The monkey got ahold of the keys.” Maybe they could all go back with an apology and a promise that we would not encroach on their territory again. Poor dodo bird misses out on man finally waking up. Like the industrial revolution exploited sweat shop workers missing out on the birth of the trade union. The Bison was just in time for the “Grandfather clause”. Before we extend this enlightened apology to the animals we must first, as descendants of western imperialist idiots, extend the same apology to the first nations people of this earth. We can’t change it all but we can at least admit that people were stolen from, killed, lied to and infected with new diseases. What spin do we put on our own history? Perspective. Looking at the same object from different angles. I’ve now crossed the country stopping at every national heritage site with my family pass. I have the western spin. It all looks pretty good. Even the French/English thing is a nice tidy story without ever mentioning the fact that both powers violated the trust of those who were here. Why do the people who learned how to live within this environment without absurd concepts like zoos get left out of the picture when it comes to the idea of “building this nation”? Mount Rushmore is a nice sculpture but there are people in that country who could look at the mountain the way it used to be and see the great faces in it without having to carve it up. They would undoubtedly be different faces. Man’s ability to control and shape nature is so revered yet relatively unsuccessful? A zoo? First nations hunters apologise to the animal they are hunting and then use it to fulfill a need that perpetuates a biological cycle. I hope the zoo staff whisper sweet apologies to the healthy animals that don’t need to be there. I know they are saving others from certain death but some undoubtedly need to be thanked for their great sacrifice. It doesn’t change anything but at least the animal will get a rationalization and a nice spin on the situation.