Free Day at the Zoo and Mischief on Buy Nothing Day!

So yesterday, Thanksgiving, I went to the zoo, because they had a free day and I guess I wanted to remind myself how fucking depressing the zoo is. I also wanted to see the new additions they'd added to the Northwest exibit, to see what types of animals had once been native here. First of all, I've been reading so much Derrick Jensen lately, and mostly been around people with the same belief systems as my own, I'd forgotten that most people view caged animals as there for their own amusement, and not as real living beings with feelings and lives of there own. I was appailed to hear a teenaged boy yelling "bitch! You are a bitch!" at the tigers. Another teenaged boy was making braying noises at the zebras, someone else commented in front of the tank of coho salmon "I wish I had my fishing pole!" The black bears got "awwww...SO CUTE!" from some teenaged girls, an otter was mistaken by several people for a beaver, people where outraged that the polar bears where in their dens, rather then out where they could be entertained by them. I'd forgotten that most people feel animals are only on this planet to please/entertain us. I was only able to walk through maybe a fourth of the zoo before running for the exit feeling like I was about to burst into tears....

I felt a kind of solidarity with the animals; I feel as trapped and caged by my life as they physically are. I could feel the depression of the bald eagles, sitting motionless inches from the net above their heads, the otter (which is a social creature,) seemed so lonely by itself behind the glass. I could see the beavers where bored; with no dams to build, with nothing useful to do, the only thing they found entertaining in the least was wearing their teeth away on tiny scraps of wood. Two owls wanted to be able to sleep; but with visitors constantly harranging them, their sleep-cycles where all screwed up. The coho salmon had no great waterfall to climb, the polar bears live in a cement entrapment that often reaches tempatures of over 100 degrees in the summer, the orangutans are kept in a little basement room and never get to go outside....and Portland is suppost to have one of the most "humane" zoos in the country....

Anyway, today was a bit better, because I got to run around downtown with Trackers NW, an organization that teaches wilderness survival skills to Portlanders. Some people have a problem with this organization; some folks call it the "Latte Primitivist Crowd," and indeed, I did find the group a bit cliquish, but what group that specializes that much isn't going to be cliquish? Besides, Portland is all about fostering cliques; as a midwifery student, I am no stranger to the clique. Overall, the activities where really fun; the first thing we did was "track" a person and pay attention to what they where paying attention to, the next activity was to get atop the roof of a downtown building, the next activity was to try to score a free meal (easily done where you are in a group of survivalists-punks,) and the final activity was to take our shoes and socks off and do something "different" in the mall, to see what types of reactions we got.

I was with my friends Andrew (who is four,) and Ian and Patrick (yey! Patrick came from the wilds back to Portland briefly!,) for this one, and I was holding Andrew's hand and we where all walking about barefoot in the mall, and we came to a fountain and Andrew said what I was thinking, which was "I want to get into the fountain!" Well, since he suggested it, I couldn't resist. I climbed over the rail and into the fountain, which was siduatied in the food court. Andrew sat on the edge and put his bare feet in, he began kicking the water and laughing.

"Can I get in?" He was giggling and I was giggling and people where starring, but most where just smiling at me, and I could see that many also wanted to abandon their shoes and socks and jump in as well.

"Sure, but you'll get wet...and you'll be cold when we go back outside..." I told Andrew. He jumped in, and together we cavorted about in the fountain, collecting pennies and quarters. I saw a rent-a-cop talking on his radio; but I knew it would be a while for him to get the real police here, so Andrew and I cavorted for awhile. We where having such fun, we hardly noticed what the people around us where saying, when I did look up, everyone looking at us looked joyful and where mostly laughing. The rent-a-cop was beginning to make me nervous, I told Andrew it was time to get out. I lifted him over the railing; as soon as I did, some well-meaning woman grabbed his hand and began leading him away.

"No, he's fine!" I grabbed him back from her, as I climbed out of the fountain myself, "we are doing a sociology experiement.." (Which was basically true.)

"Oh really?" She looked stunned. Andrew and I hurried away and joined the others.

Dripping wet, we cavorted through the mall, Andrew slipping and sliding on the slick floor with wet and bare feet. We stopped by some planters to "gather" moss growing around the base of plants..we had the idea of fashioning "shoes from moss and plastic bags. Finally, as our barefoot and wet team gathered on a bench to start fashioning the shoes, the pigs caught up with us.

"You can't be in the mall without shoes!"

"We aren't wearing shoes?" Patrick looked dumbfounded at his feet. I tried to play along. I scratched my head and looked at my own feet, then back at Patrick. "Where are our shoes?" I asked innocently. "Where did we leave our shoes?"

Ian had started cutting a piece of cardboard to fit the bottoms of his feet. He looked up at the pigs. "Shoes?" He asked as though bewildered. He repeated himself, sounding like a man trying to remember what a word meant "shoes?"

"Shoes..." The cop repeated. "You either need to leave the mall or put on shoes..."

"Oh..." Ian nodded, as though he suddenly understood, "I'm fashioning shoes...I have them here..." (He pointed to the bags of moss and cardboard, "see I'm making shoes..." Patrick, meanwhile had taken off, and I had desolved into a fit of manic laughter. Ian and I stood and looked dumbly at the cops. Andrew continuing cavoriting around, as though nothing was happening. We slowly began making our way to the entrance. The cops followed, and Andrew asked innocently "why do we need shoes?"

"Because you could get hurt, and we don't want to be responsible..." All this time, I was laughing manically. I couldn't help it, the whole thing was so ridicious and funny. I was thinking "geeze, we where just playing in the fountain, yet the best you can do is yell at us for not wearing shoes?"

Love ya,
Carrot