For various reasons, I try not to get terribly personal in this blog. This is a place for animals, for photography, and for nature. I’m going to break that a little bit today. Two weeks ago, my paternal grandmother passed away, and last weekend I flew up to Washington State for the memorial service.
There was a long period of life when I didn’t visit the zoo anywhere. I dare say, until my mother talked me into visiting the Denver Zoo in 2018, I don’t think I’d been to a zoo since I took a date to one during my senior year of high school. As a young girl though? It was that grandmother who always had that membership at what was at the time the Washington Metro Park Zoo.
I remember vividly her telling my cousins and me to rub our backs on trees like bears do. I remember the wooden penguin cutouts in the bird building. I remember elephant ears and dropping quarters in that coin-spiral donation box. I remember Packy. I remember seeing the Oregon Symphony while sitting on the grass in their performance area.
Would my trip to the Denver Zoo with my mom have had such an impact if it weren’t for that past? Probably not. Would I be here writing this and sharing the above photo if it weren’t for that? Probably not. My grandmother had a massive impact on my love of nature and wildlife, and a massive amount of that came from the zoo.
I laugh a little bit when I see a zoo post something about a new baby, or a new group of animals coming in from another zoo, because inevitably there’s going to be a comment about zoos being bad for animals, that animals should be free and wild. I have a lot of thoughts on that, and I’ll share them at some point. But the big one is that dollars to doughnuts the person posting it probably got their love for animals as a kid at the zoo. Probably with the parents or grandparents or an aunt or uncle. Even if you ignore SSPs, reintroduction projects, and external conservation efforts, the biggest thing zoos do is create people who will care about animals. And in my case, they did that with the help of my grandmother. Thanks Nana, and here’s an elephant ear for you.
The Zootographer 