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Likewise the American mountain lion (puma, cougar, felis concolor), which had been enclosed in a cage smaller than a mid-priced apartment. The female was amazingly relaxed, appearing almost tranquilized, but the male seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It was all I could do to watch the poor creature pacing up to the wire every few seconds and turning away in a controlled rage. His mate lay on her back on a low platform, almost seductively, and seemed to be trying to encourage him to relax, but he was beyond her influence. I’ll never forget the maddened frustration of that lithe, beautiful killer, imprisoned for causes beyond his comprehension.
The orangs at Toronto are the most conspicuously depressed creatures I have ever seen outside of a mental hospital. I could scarcely bear to watch them trying to have fun with their young, each knowing full well that they could not escape that lifelong, lifeless confinement (there was, at the time, not a leaf in that whole enclosure), being silently stared at every day by animals not very different from themselves (nor much smarter), for reasons that they could not begin to understand. If I may lift a phrase from Beckett: How like life. |
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One species I made no attempt to shoot was the orangutans; their enclosure is in fact a building, large by our standards, really, but obviously not big enough for very intelligent, agile climbers accustomed to having a vast tract of tropical forest at their disposal—though it is kept as dark, I suppose, as those forests normally would be.|
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