Tuesday, May 8, 2012


Yesterday, a group of six of my friends and I went on an evening adventure.  So where did our outing take us?  To the original location of the Los Angeles Zoo—a locale that today has hundred-year-old rusting iron cages, rotting wood enclosures and an awe-inspiring feel to it.  Here, one can actually climb into the enclosures that once housed monkeys and other wildlife the zoo referred to as their small animal collection. 

I’ve always been enchanted with wild animals.  What they do….  How they feel….  What they’re thinking….  Where they disappear to when they round the corners into the recesses of their cages and vanish from the public’s view.  While exploring with my friends last night, I was able to discover where the animals went when they rounded those mysterious corners within their cages. 

It was odd to climb through, over and around the old enclosures.  Some looked like prisoner-of-war solitary confinement concrete boxes.  Others were intimidating with their front facades of heavy iron bars.  Those made me wonder what kind of massive animals they housed.  Some had odd configurations that I couldn’t quite figure out, the floors of them being stacked above other adjoining enclosures where the animals contained in each would be able to peer at one another and possibly reach their paws through narrow iron bars to touch one another if they leaned up or down.

All of the enclosures left me with the same sad feeling.  What the heck were officials thinking when they thought housing wild animals in such tiny cages was a good idea?  Originally, officials had hoped to generate $10,000 to build the zoo.  But they were only able to raise a mere $2000.  So that was what they used to build enclosures for wild animals that lived out their days in cramped confinement.  If you’d like to learn more about this locale, please click on the following link to view a several-minute long video. 

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