Zoo Story (19 page)

All of Lowry Park Zoo was closed and dark, except for the front pavilion and fountain, which were strung with paper lanterns and overflowing with champagne and cocktails and $250 dinners of filet mignon and sea bass. This evening, the zoo was hosting its sixteenth annual Karamu black-tie gala. This year’s theme was Komodo & Kimonos, which explained, sort of, the lanterns, the troupe of performers undulating inside the giant yellow dragon, and the snapdragons and orchids waiting at every table, along with fortune cookies containing a breathless message from a corporate sponsor:
Good fortune smiles on AmSouth customers!

From their tables, the celebrants gazed into a sea of the wealthy and connected and surgically enhanced. At the zoo, attention was almost always directed toward the behavior of other animals. But on this one night, the spotlight turned to the ruling species. Karamu was the zoo’s greatest gathering of alphas. They came to see and be seen, to assert their place in the hierarchy, to show off their jewelry and their curves. Sex, money, and power intersected in a glittering tableau. The hidden currents, churning beneath the civilized veneer, slipped into view. The human exhibit, in full display.

Not everyone was thrilled to be there. At a back table, one of the men—his name was Mike—was complaining between the courses. At his house, he usually decided what to do for fun on Saturday nights. Just this once, he had followed his wife’s lead.

“Next thing you know, I’m in a tux,” he said, appealing to the other men around him. He turned to his spouse. “Why don’t you just kick me in the balls?”

On the far side of the pavilion, Lex shook hands and accepted congratulatory hugs as he introduced everyone to his new wife, Elena Sheppa. The news of their wedding swept through the crowd. Other women appraised the bride, who shimmered in pearls and pink and the aura of newlywed bliss. Someone explained that she was an artist, a sculptor who worked with glass. The consensus held that she was lovely. Unlike so many other men at the gala, Lex looked at ease in his formal wear, hugging Elena close as he smiled and made eye contact with the titans who had come to supply the zoo with cash. An array of CEOs was on hand, along with assorted tycoons, bank execs, law partners, plus one man in a black-on-black tux who was described, again and again, as the orthodontist to all of South Tampa.

A droning buzz arose from the tables. The guests laughed and gossiped and told jokes. They talked so much, at such volume, it was hard to make out what any of them were saying. It did not matter. Just to watch them was far more enlightening. These were primates, after all. Respectable men and women, yes. The highest echelons of Tampa society. But still primates.

What would a field anthropologist, studying this elite sampling of the species, have observed in their behavior? Perhaps the way the males puffed out their chests—no different from the boys at the mall—and swaggered as they approached another alpha. Or the gleam in their eyes as they tested one another with death-grip handshakes. Some skipped the handshake combat and moved directly to mock wrestling, wrapping their arms around one another’s shoulders, squeezing and smothering their potential rivals until they surrendered. Once these contests were completed, some of the alphas stood together and surveyed the breeding choices among the crowd.

“I’m hungry now,” said one.

The behavior of the women was equally primal. Many had dedicated countless hours and great expense to ensuring that every eye turned their way. Since they were at a zoo, the females had borrowed from nature’s palette and showcased themselves with feathers and leopard prints and fur. Even Pam Iorio, Tampa’s mayor, had gone wild. Known for her monochromatic wardrobe, she was now wearing a zebra print. “Good to see you again,” she said to one well-wisher after another, smiling her official smile. “Good to see you again.” A few of the women—not the mayor—were testing the boundaries of how much flesh could be laid bare without inviting the censure of other females in the tribe. One woman wore a shiny black gown, the front of which plunged to just above her navel, revealing her perfectly tanned torso and one hemisphere of each perfectly round breast. Keeping the other hemispheres under wraps was a minor feat of engineering.

The night was all about display. Many of the females towered in stillettos, drawing the attention of men all around. The effect of the heels—the extension of the calves, the raising of their hindquarters—made a statement remarkably similar to Enshalla’s presentation to Eric during their mating dance. With their footwear these women were instinctively paying homage to a primal truth that strutted through every cocktail party and late-night soiree. It was no accident that such shoes were called CFM pumps. One man whose wife was among the most provocatively dressed stood guard at her side, watching the other males openly stare. For most of the night, the man kept one hand attached to his wife’s body—first her arm, then the small of her back. Then, in front of everyone, he traced his fingers down her spine and cupped his palm around the top of her backside. His claim was clear enough.

Up front, the auctioneer was accepting bids for one of the elephants. “Ten thousand dollars right here,” he cried. “Come on, we need eleven!”

The evening was a smash. One couple bid $11,000 to adopt an elephant for a year, calling the pledge a wedding present to Lex and his new wife. Another couple bid $30,000 to adopt three elephants. By the time the proceeds were counted, Lowry Park had raised more than $195,000. Near the end, when the band picked up the tempo and a conga line looped around the tables, Lex approached a dozen or so guests, and whispered, “Come with me.”

Lex led them away from the lights and the music and the dancing, but the group did not care. He had promised them a special late-night preview of the elephants. The select few he had chosen included some of the zoo’s heavy-hitter donors, as well as Dick Greco—the former mayor who had hobnobbed with Herman at City Hall three decades before. Greco was still a big supporter of Lowry Park. Through the darkened zoo all of them went, past the free-flight aviary and the petting zoo empty now of children and goats, past the warthogs and the giraffes and zebras. Outside the elephant building, Lex bewitched the group with the narrative of the giants waiting inside, telling how they had lost their families as calves and how the zoo had rescued them from another death sentence in Swaziland and how they were flown across the Atlantic in defiance of PETA.

“Did you say the animal-rights groups wanted them shot?” someone asked.

“Yes,” said Lex. “Because they feel they’re better off dead than in a zoo.”

The answer was a little simplistic, yes. But this was not the time for a nuanced discourse on the history and ethics of translocating wild species. The elephant building was the epicenter of Lex’s territory. He would tell the story however he saw fit.

He unlocked the front door and escorted everyone into the Africa department’s office, where he paused again. The man had a talent for ratcheting expectations. He told the group about Ellie and how her whole family group had been shot in Namibia and how she was brought to the United States as a tiny orphaned calf.

“That’s incredible!” a voice called out.

The group was too big to squeeze inside the elephant barn at once, so Lex split them into two groups, reminding everyone to stay behind the yellow line that extended several feet away from the stalls. As the guests stepped inside, their mouths dropped. The elephants were lined up before them, pressing against the bars, trunks waving. Up close, they seemed much bigger. More real. More vivid.

Lex introduced Mbali, who extended her trunk almost to his face.

“Does she want human contact?” someone asked.

“No,” said Lex, staying clear. “She’s just smelling me.”

“This is Ellie,” he said, walking to the front of another stall. “Do you see how much bigger she is than the other elephants?”

Ellie, too, reached toward him.

“That’s OK, sweetie pie.”

The visitors stood transfixed at the yellow line, captivated as they stared up into the elephants’ faces and sensed the intelligence and curiosity swirling inside. When Lex turned off the light to leave, the elephants’ trunks were still in the air, beckoning.

Sunlight.
Bulldozers chugging and beeping, construction workers scurrying. Plumes of dust rising about the five and a half acres that would soon be known as Safari Africa. A few weeks before the May 28 opening, Brian Morrow, Lowry Park’s design guru, stood in the middle of the commotion and surveyed his creation. Brian’s title was director of capital construction. As a boy, he had designed a model theme park in his family’s basement, with a roller coaster and a Ferris wheel. Now he created exhibits at the zoo, studying eroded riverbanks and weathered stones—all so he could heighten the public’s sense that they were truly setting foot in Africa.

“Replicating nature,” he called it, and he loved the immense scale of what the zoo was attempting. “Africa is big. The exhibits are big. The animals are big.”

One of Lowry Park’s goals, he explained, was to put visitors as close to the animals as possible without endangering anyone on either side of the fence. That’s why the zoo had built a platform where guests could stand at eye level with giraffes and feed them by hand, and a raised viewing area where they could watch from above as the elephants swam in their new 250,000-gallon pool. “It’s all about the idea of the juxtaposition of humans and nature,” Brian said. “Proximity equals excitement, and excitement will turn into a connection and love for animals.”

From another person’s mouth, these sentiments might have sounded Orwellian. Bubbling out of Brian, with all his enthusiasm, they made you want to hug a wildebeest. Even Brian, however, would have acknowledged the limits of such artifice. No matter how much ingenuity and delight he and others poured into this project, Safari Africa could never come close to the real thing. Msholo and Mbali and Sdudla and Matjeka must have recognized this better than any of the humans. The Swazi elephants appeared to have adjusted to the new world as well as anyone could have expected. But the acres of the open elephant yards and the accompanying pool were a long way from the landscape they had once roamed. It was true that their former herds in Swaziland were systematically tearing down the trees inside the game parks. Still, what remained was glorious: deep thickets where the red leopard grass grew past the ears of baby rhinos, the watering holes crowded with wildebeests and impalas, drinking deeply as they watched for crocodiles. Some things could not be replicated.

As opening day for Safari Africa drew closer, a sense of momentum could be felt in every department of the zoo. Carie and the rest of the Asia staff exulted in the budding relationship between their beloved Sumatran tigers, who were now peacefully sharing the exhibit almost every day. So far Enshalla showed no sign of pregnancy, but she and Eric were mating frequently. One day, Enshalla had even allowed the male to join her on the tiger platform—the same one that had been built as her mother’s haven when Enshalla was still a cub—and had curled herself at Eric’s feet, exuding contentment.

The famously reserved demeanor of the aviary staff had been replaced by tremulous expectation as they awaited the arrival of the zoo’s first argus pheasant chick. The female pheasant had laid eggs before, but none had ever hatched. The keepers could tell this time would be different, because they had been candling the pheasant’s egg—placing it under a bright beam of light that allowed them to see within and evaluate the viability of the embryo. Under the light, the brown shell became translucent and the embryo revealed itself as a deep crimson form stirring in a web of veins that spidered through the yolk. One of the keepers pointed to a tiny dent in the shell where the embryo was already pushing with its beak.

“This is the pip right here,” she said. “We found it this morning.”

The aviary staff was keeping the egg inside an incubator, readying a warm new home for the chick. Soon it would make its entrance, chipping its way into the world. The morning after the first pip appeared, the staff could see the tip of a beak, poking from inside. When they returned from lunch, they found the argus chick standing in the incubator, wet and sticky, surrounded by tiny shards of the brown shell.

“When he made his mind up,” said one keeper, “he was ready.”

In those crucial first hours, they tried not to touch him too much. They didn’t want him imprinting on them, mistaking one of them for his mother. The successful hatching made them almost dizzy. Beaming, they led visitors back to the incubator to show off their new arrival. The chick, tiny and brown and fuzzy, stood in the light, softly peeping.

The zoo had entered a streak unlike any it had ever seen before. Safari Africa was going to be a monster hit, Lex and his team could already feel it. All of them, meanwhile, were crowing because the latest issue of
Child
magazine declared Lowry Park the best zoo for kids in the United States.

After months of studying more than 150 accredited zoos,
Child
had rated Lowry Park above the biggest institutions in the country, with the San Diego Zoo earning the number-two slot. In its article, the magazine saluted Lowry Park for its hands-on exhibits, its array of children’s educational programs, and its longstanding commitment to rehabilitating manatees. The judges also commended the zoo’s commitment to safety and noted that the staff scheduled Code One drills every month. “The most of our survey,” the magazine said.

More good news followed. That same month, attendance hit a historic benchmark as the staff welcomed the ten-millionth visitor to walk through the gates since the new zoo opened in 1988. The lucky guest—a soldier on leave with his wife and children—appeared slightly stunned at the ceremony that awaited him on the other side.

A banner was unfurled. A TV crew hovered. “Congratulations!” someone called out.

Amid the celebrations,
there was one more piece of news. No banners were raised for this one. Only a few days after his hatching, the argus pheasant chick died from an infection. The aviary keepers were devastated. To have the chick snatched away, just as they were getting their hopes up, was too hard. The loss, unknown to anyone outside the zoo, was another turn of nature’s wheel, a quiet reminder that no matter how hard the keepers worked to care for their animals, there would always be complications that could not be foreseen, outcomes that could not be forestalled.