Crass menagerie: the inside skinny on the modern American zoo.

• Author: Taussig, Doron
• Position: 'Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives' by Thomas French - Book review

Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives

by Thomas French

Hyperion, 304 pp.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Every time I go to a zoo as an adult, the same thing happens. I'm enjoying walking around--I'm amused by the otters, amazed by the lions, fascinated by the wolf (it looks so much like a dog!), and a little scared of the polar bear, even though she's on the other side of a moat. Then I get to the gorillas.

The gorillas, to me, are different. Something in their eyes, which often seem to be averted, is more substantive than the indifference of the lions. I don't want to say they look soulful, exactly. But the gorillas give me the distinct impression that they understand what's going on: they're living their lives behind reinforced glass, and I'm watching them for kicks. They don't like it. And because they don't like it, it seems to me, they don't belong there.

Now, this is not necessarily to say that because I find deeper meaning in the eyes of a gorilla, no gorilla should be kept in a zoo. After all, some people find meaning in the eyes of a chimp, or an elephant; some sensitive souls find it all the way down the food chain, in the eyes of the mouse in the snake pit. And some don't find it in animals at all. It's very subjective. This much is clear, though: for many people, at some level, something about zoos is disquieting.

If you're like me, you grapple with this discomfort by trying not to think about it, and then forgetting the whole thing until the next time you see a great ape. Thomas French took a different approach: he decided to think about it a lot. French, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the St. Petersburg Times and journalism professor, started paying close attention to Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo back in 2003, when the zoo made the controversial decision to bring in four previously wild African elephants. Over the next six years he inhabited the place, getting to know keepers and animals alike. The book he's written, Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives, isn't an explicit attempt to assess the morality of zoos. Rather, it's a narrative of life in the zoo for both humans and animals. But at the heart of the story, surfacing again and again for French and the reader alike, is the inevitable question in the air at any zoo: Is this okay?

Before we get further into that, though, I want to make this clear: Zoo Story is a very fun read. French manages many feats of storytelling here, but the greatest is writing a book for adults...