Kristen Goes to the Zoo.

Last Saturday, I visited the Kathmandu Zoo with Sapana and her niece Nisham. Having seen the documentaries Blackfish and The Cove, and also having beheld two rhinos “playing piggy-back” on a 3^rd grade fieldtrip, I am no friend to the institution. My last visit to the Knoxville Zoo occurred in 2008 with my aunt Carolyn. After a three hour tour, we ruefully concluded that a zoo is a lot like a nursing home for animals; it's somewhere no member of the animal kingdom EVER wants to end up. 
After all, only a sadist would force a polar bear to endure a Tennessee summer.

All their purpose (like eating and mating) has been supplanted by tasty zookeepers waving large slabs of meat and setting them up on unlikely blind-dates with that silverback from Cincinnati. You know, the one with the dandruff. Clearly, nothing is more sexless than “reproducing in captivity.” Poor bastards.  

But if the Knoxville Zoo is a nursing home, the Kathmandu Zoo is an outer ring of hell. Rather than a simulation of natural habitat, each specimen sits in a modest dirt enclosure, freckled with scat and scattered hay.  The leopard paced relentlessly in his cage, a moving meditation. His spots rippled to his rhythm, showcasing the muscle underneath, tightly coiled, never springing. The ostrich, sequestered to a space the size of a little league baseball diamond, stood with his eyes half-lidded, head sweeping the ground like a lazy broom. The zoological staff pulled out all the stops for the hippo, however; he had a choice of two algae-infested puddles to marinate in. On the up side, contrary to all the signage (DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS, YOU MORONS), most of the specimens munched on junkfood in exchange for a good photo op. Gazing upon a blue sheep that was pretending to be dead (see below), I wondered what kind of vendettas would be unleashed in the unlikely case of an insurrection.

Happy Happy Hippo?

Himalayan Blue Sheep: Hero of Peter Matthiesen's famous novel, possibly in a coma

Rhinos: most extraordinary when seen through a cyclone fence, and ONLY a cyclone fence

Everything at the zoo, including the animals, was coated in a thick layer of dust, lending the measly menagerie a dismal, colorless mood. This didn’t damper the visitors, though. The zoo also featured a large picnic area littered with rubbish and rusty children’s carnival rides in need of a good tune-up.

Zoogoers enjoying a Saturday lunch, just before the elephant barreled through.

As I quietly contemplated the golden-necked cockatoo, I was startled from my reveries by panicked scuffling and people parting like the Red Sea for a painted elephant lumbering through the grounds. As visitors scrambled to yank their toddlers to safety, or leapt over the side-walk railings—clearly concerned about the possibility of an uncaged, 2 ton animal in their stead—I found myself quietly chanting “Jumanji…Jumanji… Jumanji…”