Even if I had a “bucket list” I don’t believe that the Arctic would be on it. While its various seas, glaciers and ice floes, as well as the dwarf shrubs and lichens, must be quite a sight to behold, I am just no longer attracted to windy places that can reach -68°. Not that I ever was, actually.
But I do enjoy viewing wildlife and there is something appealing about seeing caribou, muskox, polar bears and other animals in their natural habitat. Part of that appeal is akin to going to somebody’s home and snooping around just a bit to find out a little about the host…the books that line the shelves, the artwork on the walls, the contents of the medicine cabinet.
However, the fact that in all likelihood I’ll never have the opportunity view native Arctic species and discover their reading habits isn’t diminishing the quality of my life.
On my deathbed you’ll not hear reports of my having said, “Damn. I missed my chance to freeze my ass off hoping to see giant white bears who would gladly eat me for lunch.”
I once saw a polar bear in captivity and I must say that it was one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen.
The kids were quite young then and I forget exactly what it was that possessed Geri and me to subject them to an August day at the Los Angeles Zoo in Griffith Park. Maybe we thought that an afternoon of their incessant squirming, fussing and crying against a different backdrop would somehow be enjoyable for all of us. We were wrong. It was hotter than hell, as I recall quite vividly, as we slogged our way through the maze of reptile houses, displays of pathetically unhappy looking lions and tigers pacing in their cages, tethered elephants and camels, and cage after cage of monkeys, apes and gorillas.
I find it interesting to note that currently the L.A. Zoo’s website offers a list of its most “notable animals” by name: Tina, Kelly, Billy, Alfred and Rapunzel, among many others—who may or may not have their stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame—without regard to species. It is anthropomorphism taken to a whole new level.
For all of the reasons suggested above, I’ve never much cared for zoos. I’ve always thought that if we were the ones in cages and wild animals wandered around looking at us things might be more interesting.
We came across a harsh, mini-landscape of concrete tundra surrounded by a moat of algae-tainted water. A giant polar bear sat on his haunches at the moat’s edge, his front paws crossed in his lap as if trying to maintain a sense of modesty. He looked wistfully at the handful of spectators gathered along the railing of the display. He looked lonely, uncomfortable and miserably hot. He reminded me of Burl Ives in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
We left. It was my last visit to a zoo.
WHEN WE WERE DATING, Geri and I would occasionally go to the Fox Inn Rathskeller on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica. Since it was on street level, it wasn’t really a rathskeller. Bill “The Fox” Foster, the club’s owner and star, wasn’t really a pianist. He played a funky upright piano in a style reminiscent of nobody I’d ever heard. Suffice it to say his style showed more muscle than artistry. He also couldn’t sing. That didn’t stop him, however, from singing a repertoire of bawdy songs that were funny and endearing, but mostly sexist. Nobody really seemed to mind.
The real talent of The Fox was his consumption of beer, which he did with alarming speed. It took him a mere 3.5 seconds to down a pitcher of beer. He could empty a 12-ounce glass with a flick of his wrist or, for comparison’s sake, faster than I can take 10 ml of Robitussin from an oral syringe. Each exhibition of his unique talent was abetted by the audience cheering “Zicke Zacke Zicke Zache, hoi hoi hoi!” The phrase is a German challenge to drink.
He performed his beer tricks multiple times nightly. Nothing in his barrel house songbook could start without a pitcher; they each ended with a pitcher; the glasses of beer seemed to be just part of the middle of each song.
The audience participated on many levels—from trying to emulate the beer-drinking prowess, which explains why the floor of the joint was always awash in an inch or two of cheap lager, to the call-and-response singing.
“Have you heard the one about the blue-balled orangutan?” he’d shout.
“No, we haven’t heard the one about the blue-balled orangutan,” we’d shout back.
“Well, let me tell you the one about the blue-balled orangutan,” he’d promise.
“Please tell us the one about the blue-balled orangutan.”
In the latter half of the 1970s, this was funny stuff.
On a not-quite-rainy afternoon, Geri and I happened to be walking around the London Zoo. I don’t know why. Perhaps the pubs were closed. Anyway, we observed the exhibits with great disinterest until we came upon a cage full of blue-balled orangutans, though that wasn’t the name used on the plaque describing what we were seeing. It was in Latin, but who cared? We had discovered the blue-balled orangutan—the only name we needed to know—and so we sang the song we had learned from The Fox as we made our way through Regent’s Park.
MY BEST FRIEND IN FIRST GRADE WAS Michael Derwin. Our mothers accompanied us, along with 20 or so classmates, to the Brookfield Zoo on a Spring field trip. Michael and I hated that our mothers had volunteered to be room mothers because, well…it’s kind of obvious, right?
We decided to show our independence by climbing under some fencing to go play with the giraffes that wandered around docilly in what seemed a large pasture. We got in the appropriate amount of trouble for our antics and I became inexplicably enamored with giraffes—for life.
Giraffes are beyond goofy looking. They are by any standards oafish and awkward. They are blanketed in a poorly designed quilt, their eyelashes remind one of Tammy Faye Bakker. They seem ill-designed—a genetic mistake that has persisted.
To me, giraffes are to the wild kingdom what bassoons are to the symphony. Ridiculous, yet necessary, their positions are essential to what is around them.
And people are killing them for sport (giraffes, not bassoonists).
Even in the wild, these magnificent mammals tend to be docile and curious. They are ungulates and therefore prey for their carnivorous stalkers. Their numbers are dwindling and yet the internet has almost-daily displays of their sprawled carcasses with some wealthy trophy hunter posed victoriously, a high-powered rifle thrust into the air.
While certainly not opposed to hunting, I have my limits. I believe that a hunter’s family table should come before his/her wall. I don’t believe it is right to kill something you won’t or can’t eat. I knew a man once who told me that the thrill of killing of a giraffe was to watch its 20-foot neck cascade to the ground.
It struck me that this guy might also cheer lead at motor vehicle accidents.
If I had a bucket list, Africa, with climate much to my liking, would certainly be on it as I would truly enjoy seeing all those magnificent animals wandering about the jungles, river bottoms and deserts.
In all probability I’ll not get to Africa and will have to settle for National Geographic specials.
But I hope my kids, their spouses and the grandkids all get there someday and that there are lions, tigers and giraffes left to be seen. Maybe even a blue-balled orangutan or two.
Photo-illustration by Courtney A. Liska