#zoo things

Okay, it's not exactly pop culture but something from this past weekend is bothering me and I wanted to write about it. So this past weekend I went to Audubon Zoo. And it's great! It's a mostly well laid out zoo with a lot of interesting stuff and helpful signage and it is putting in a lazy river and if you don't want to ride a lazy river and maybe look at animals at the same time then I don't really understand you.

But one portion of the zoo gave me pause. It has a "Louisiana" section, which is more than fine. However, the framing of this section bothered me a great deal. Because in almost every enclosure is leftover boats and old stripped trucks or an abandoned house. The frame for the area is the same - there's a lot of old stores that act as walls or mini reptile houses. And it's weird to me, so weird that you would present the animals native to your region in the refuse of humanity. After all these animals were here before these human settlements. It's like saying these animals just live in our garbage. If there was more information about the interface between animal communities and growing human communities it might be one thing, but that's not what is happening. It was just a weird choice that bugged me as I went around learning about bobcats and black bears and fish. Oh, and a swamp monster. A weirdly placed Swamp Monster!