The Tin Lizard

New At The Zoo

How can today's "zoological gardens" reconcile the needs of the animals they keep (for comfort, natural habitat, and the like) with the expectations of the people who come to see them (for accessibility, activity, but also safety)?

Good question, and today's Washington Post Magazine feature article on the National Zoo does a good job of describing how today's zoos are trying to resolve the problem. It's worth a read.

Certainly, if like me, you return to a zoo you used to know after years of absence, you're going to find that a lot of things have changed in the interim.  Zoos no longer try to emphasize variety, but to expand the space offered to those animals they do keep, and in some cases to breed them.  At Washington's National Zoo, for example, they will no longer keep both kinds of elephants, and hippos have been banished altogether, in order to expand the room to roam for the Asian elephants, who will remain on site.

Most zoos now also expend a lot of effort to manage the animals' environment in ways that seek to provide more interaction with their environment, while also offering up the close personal observation that most zoo visitors seem to want.  When all is said and done, though, everyone seems to agree that the denizens of modern zoos are neither truly wild (a surprising number weren't even born wild, but in captivity) nor really "tame." 

For me the article raises as many questions as it answers:

Are efforts to accommodate the animals on both sides of the bars worthwhile?  This is pretty easy:  I'd say yes, we expect these days that the creatures will be granted living space and treated in a humane way; and the economics of keeping them means that the spectators have to come away with some sense of getting value from their visit.

Does the concentration on fewer species make sense?  Over time, probably.  The space available to any zoo is limited, so efforts to provide better "living quarters" inevitably mean they'll be fewer in number.  It occurs to me the trend may even benefit zoos nationally -- if you go all the time to the Brookfield Zoo, there's hardly a reason to visit a zoo in another city when you're there, if you know they'll have pretty much the same animals.  You might, however, if you can expect to see something different.

Should we bother with zoos at all?  Do we need them, except as a handy word to use up a "z" in "Words With Friends?" This is a tougher one.  In the internet age, you can see animals in the wild, unrestrained by zoo boundaries, any time you want.  Still, for most of us, the closer, in-person experience adds considerably to our wonder, our understanding, or our interest.  (Just as viewing a concert on DVD, or seeing a sports event on TV, isn't the same as being there.)  On balance, I think we'll keep zoos around for a while but I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the smaller and more marginal ones begin to disappear.

Weedy Wonder

Crabgrass gets no respect.  But we should perhaps take a moment to focus on the miracle that is Digitaria sanguinalis.  Take for example, the specimen pictured below.  I am quite certain there was no sign of it a week ago, yet as a week of blazing sun in the mid-90s or higher sizzled other grass, this little guy got a start in life and took off running; then two days of heavy rain turned him into a behemoth, a huge hunk of hearty herbaceousness about six inches across. And this plant isn't alone, not at all, because crabgrass tends to travel Japanese-style, in large clusters (but without the cameras). 

So, let's admire the humble crabgrass for its ubiquity and persistence.  It's not even a wholly ugly plant in the early morning, speckled with dew.  

Rubbish Bourgeoisie

Today, Monday, is the day trash is picked up in our neighborhood.  One of the rules stipulated by the county is that trash carts should be "placed at the curb the night before the scheduled pickup."  It's not a particularly reasonable rule, to me; the truck never starts its rounds before 8, and seldom rolls around our area before about 8:30.  Everybody is up by then, so why put stuff out the night before?  To feed the raccoons and opossums?

Nevertheless, taking my habitual morning walk around the 'hood this AM, I am reminded how strictly everyone observes that rule. Sunday afternoons, I can look up and down the street, and see everyone has dutifully put out their trash by 6:00 PM or so.  (Well, except me.  I put mine out at 7:00 the next morning.)  This is true even though many of them can be seen running out the next morning to add a few things to the trash.

What's so striking about this is that these are Americans, who in every other conceivable way are scofflaws:  Driving 10 miles above the speed limit; running red lights; exaggerating little charitable tax deductions; telling a little white lie to try to avoid jury duty; washing their car in the street and letting the polluted water run right down to the storm sewer at the bottom of the hill.... 

The good burghers of Arlington?  It's a mystery why with this one regulation, everyone seems to fall so willingly, even avidly, into line.  Maybe the explanation is that the county doesn't specify a penalty for NOT adorning the street throughout the night with your trash cans.  If there's no penalty, there's no little frisson of risk to make it fun.   

Olympic Madness - People Acting Dumbly

It's been discovered that the uniforms the U.S. Olympic athletes will wear in London were all made in China.  (By a guy named Ral-Fu Lo-rong, it seems.)  Naturally, a lot of people have become exercised by this news.  Indeed, as so many are already asking, "what were they [the USOC] thinking?" 

One answer might be that they weren't thinking at all.  In an environment where outsourcing of jobs is an almost daily matter of discussion in the media, and when a "made in America" movement has gained quite a lot of traction, to have made a conscious decision to buy Chinese for this patriotic flagship event is pretty blindingly stupid.   Not to have considered where the clothing was manufactured is equally as dumb. 

If the Committee was thinking, presumably they were focused on the bottom line:  could China produce more cheaply?  Perhaps they were blinded by the desire to get a "designer" involved.  That would seem to have backfired -- these uniforms are really dorky looking, and should make our athletes a laughingstock at the opening ceremonies.  But while we're talking about the designer - shouldn't Lauren have had the foresight to think about "made in America," even if the USOC didn't?

The USOC's blunder is just one of those things - it will blow over with no lasting effect.  But its object lesson is that corporate types (for that in essence is what USOC folks are) can't be left isolated in their profit-oriented bubbles, they need adult supervision to do the right thing.  Executives at Wells Fargo are learning that today, too.

 

Post Oak Down For The Count

It's always sad to hear of a historic tree, a contemporary of G. Washington and those guys, biting the dust, but the storms that hit the Washington DC area a week ago today destroyed the largest post oak in Virginia.

Still, this kind of thing happens.  A few years ago, the historic Wye Oak in Maryland was destroyed by a different storm.  The survivors become even more notable, and we move on. 

We can't predict what a passing storm might do to any individual tree.  Some will fall, others will survive.   It's a different story on the macro scale, however.  The increasing frequency of violent storms inevitably means that more damage, possibly even loss of life, will occur somewhere.  That is far from unpredictable, yet we seem never to be prepared for it.  More on that topic later.