Impressions from the Woodland Park Zoo

These reflections come from this past week's visit to the Seattle area with our kids' grandparents.

Quietness or the lack thereof ...

Two instances involving children occurred while our family has been at the motel and visiting the zoo. The first is a comment our son made last night, “I just can’t get to sleep with all the noise.” I-5 is roughly a block away, and I might add that the entire time we have been here I have not seen a lull in the traffic. The second incident occurred at the zoo while we were looking at the day and night animal exhibit. Both of these exhibits ask for the visitors to please be quiet as the animals are quite sensitive to the noise. The night exhibit includes multiple signs and information about the necessity for silence. Yet, my wife and I found ourselves reminding other groups of children to please be quiet and move slowly if they wished to see the animals. One young man even commented, “I am being quiet.” He then turned and called out to his pals in a boisterous voice to wait for him.
We humans seem to be losing our ability to comprehend the world around us through all the static or human-created “white” noise in the background. We seem to be passing this on to our children. Part of leaving a minimum wake (impact upon our environment) is directly proportional to our ability to observe the world around us. How much is part of our ability to observe the world around us proportional to being quiet enough to observe?

Pacing of Animals & Lack of Habitat for them to return too

Having a Labrador Retriever as a member of the pack (family to us) we have come to recognize certain dog behaviors, and to interpret them. We may not know what is going on in his Labrador Retriever mind, but we can tell if he is anxious, relaxed, playful or trying to hide his pain.

When we were at the zoo, we observed the “Painted Wolf” (or African Wild-dog) exhibit. The information shared that the African Wild-dog is more like a wolf than a feral dog. Their habitat continues to shrink. They are being poisoned to protect livestock, etc. The three male wild-dogs in the exhibit had room, and yet they paced and paced and paced. There is no way a pack used to running on thousands of acres is going to be used to even an acre exhibit, let alone one that needs to fit within a zoo in a major metropolitan area.
In all, I was impressed at what the Woodland Park Zoo is doing and is trying to do. Some of their animals are extinct now in the wild, often due to human environmental change, and/or destruction. Many of the animals have no environment in which to return. Yet I also left feeling sad at other creatures’ captivity.