Pessimism and the Zoo

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

PALLIATIVES for the fatigue of the business man and the tired war-worker are increasing in number, and the qualities attributed to them by their sponsors suggest the tales which enticed the Spaniards of De Soto’s day to search for the Spring of Life. All these rejuvenators are foods, — concentrated foods, — and are inevitably harmless to the most delicate business stomach. They are nuxated or peptonated nervines and vitalines. They have a disagreeable metallic taste, like old tin cans; but one becomes reconciled to the flavor, or takes his Energine with lemon-juice or milk or white of egg, according to the directions on the carton — or with whiskey, if one does n’t mind spoiling whiskey, and can get it.

Fatigue and depression are concomitant and introactive. Equally they demoralize one’s work. In my own case, it is easier to cure both by eliminating depression than by drugging fatigue. To this end I visit the Zoo at the end of the day’s work, and am refreshed. There is more uplift in a ring-tailed monkey than may be acquired from twenty dollars’ worth of Nuxated Ferro Bovine.

First I visit the chimpanzee, for he retires early and is not to be called forth from his couch. He is middleaged, and bears a disquieting resemblance to a man I know and rather like; disquieting because I cannot reconcile his conduct with that of my friend, who is a conventional chap without athletic ability. Any loud wailing sound brings the chimpanzee to the bars of his cage, where he stares fixedly into one’s eyes. I return his gaze, and he determines to outstare me. I do not move. Suddenly he lifts his arm as in threat, hoping that my eye will be drawn momentarily from his; but I maintain my maddening calm. Further attempts failing, he turns his back on me and tramps completely round his cage, bringing down his right foot with a crash at each second step, in rising crescendo, until the evening air throbs with the sound of his marching. If he returns to find my eye still unwavering, he exhausts himself in exhibitions of fearful strength and make-believe savagery; but if I move, he is satisfied that my courage has been shaken, and retires muttering to his straw boudoir.

The baboon is to the chimpanzee what the German is to the civilized man; and I hate him. There is a certain fascination in sheer hellishness, but he shakes from me the tranquillity which I court in the Zoo, and I am apt to avoid him. There is no good in him, no spark of humanity, and much capacity for harm.

Not far from him is a monkey whom I like and respect. He is a very small, elderly gentleman, deliberate in his movements, and inclined to be philosophical. He wears a full beard, with picturesque, long side-whiskers. He is gravely friendly; and a juvenile weakness for peanuts brings him to the front of his cage, where he accepts the proffered gift without unseemly haste, and eats it as becomes his years, removing shell and pink tissue, and chewing slowly to the rhythm of moving whiskers. So consistently elderly does he seem, that one is shocked to see him ascend to the top of the cage nimbly, like a fly going up a wall, and prepare himself for slumber on a rounded stick.

I am not even mildly interested in the deer family. I have seen them in the woods of Canada, and there they are shy and beautiful; but take a deer and tame him, feed him hay and prepared cereal until he lies with feet extended, jaw moving rhythmically sidewise, stupid eye roving aimlessly — and you have destroyed the elusive charm of shy alertness, of shadowy and transitory presence, which is his heritage only in his own woods.

For different reasons I am left quite cold by guinea-pigs, white rats, and the peculiar vermin of Central and South America. They are quite uninteresting even in their own habitat, and captivity merely adds stupidity to their negative peculiarities. I know animals fairly well, and there is nothing to a guinea-pig.

Few people know what a satisfactory animal is the gnu. Quite a number of hooved animals, like the ibex and the sacred ox, are mere tiresome combinations or Burbankisms; but the gnu has qualities all his own. His head is homely as an unpainted barn — flat nose and very broad mouth and ears misshapen and uncouth. His body is that of an exceedingly powerful pony, with strong neck and rakish tail. His galvanic energy puts to shame the glorious abandon of a cat on a tin roof. When I arrive before his inclosure, he has usually retired to the shed in which he sleeps, and stands in the doorway with faraway eyes. Efforts to entice him forth are futile. I turn at last as if to go; and as I move, he bursts forth with the most heathenish cry that ever clattered from an animal throat. If it resembles anything, it is the trench-klaxon that warns of an impending gas-attack — a series of staccato shrieks which would shake the teeth from a band-saw. I don’t see how he can stand the noise he makes. Arm a rabbit with the voice of a gnu, and lions will slink from his path.

Reaching the bars of his inclosure in three or four astounding leaps, the gnu halts, with head averted and feet wide apart, ignoring me utterly. When I move to right or left, he remains motionless until fifteen feet are between us; then he closes the distance with a bound, shrieks terribly twice or thrice, and once more affects to be utterly oblivious of my presence. When finally I leave him, the clatter of his fearful voice pursues me for hundreds of feet, drowning all other sounds.

I have always derived pleasure from bears. I know a little black Himalayan bear who is friendly and ingenuous, and very fond of grass. The floor of his cage is elevated from the ground, so that the tender shoots of luscious grass are just beyond reach of the searching black paw. But he thinks of it often; and being just out of reach, it has come to mean more to him than do ordinary foods upon which his mind has not been driven to dwell. The juicy sound of grass being plucked before his cage awakens him from profound sleep, though the enticing cry of the parkgoer stirs not even his subconscious depths.

When I offer him the grass I have picked, a blade at a time, he very gently forces open my hand with his two paws, and annexes the entire visible supply, which he draws beneath him and consumes very slowly, rolling each particular blade beneath his tongue. When he has finished and no more is forthcoming, he submits to being petted through the bars of the cage, though one is conscious that he would eat more grass if it were forced upon him.

The big Alaskan bear leans similarly to grass, and is likewise playful. But he weighs over twelve hundred pounds, I am told, and I find his frolicking a bit rough. In the course of innocent play he once pinned my arm to the rail of the cage by leaning heavily upon it, and reaching out his immense paw, he dropped it playfully on my head. Only the knowledge that my country needed me prevented my military ghost from departing from that spot instanter. As I staggered away, that terrible paw was thrust through the heavy bars in a plaintive appeal for more grass. The experience brought a glimmer of discretion, and in our occasional sparring matches I distinguish myself by the alacrity with which I withdraw when his small expressive eye prophesies a lunge. It is curious that he keeps his long claws religiously sheathed during our bouts; and on the occasion when my hand slipped into his panting mouth, — and it must have startled him, — he did not close upon it, though it was temporarily wedged. Were I not an army man, the moment would have been an anxious one.

There is a uniformed guard at the Zoo, who is quite well along in years, and who tells me he is partly blind. I have talked with him many times, for he is a rare soul, who knows the personal tastes and weaknesses of each animal from years of sympathetic study. Often I wonder whether it is through his infirmity or through the kindness of his old heart that he fails to perceive me as I feed and molest the beasts in his care, and find rest and relaxation in breaking the wise laws of the Zoo.