First of two parts
[img]1926|right|Mr. Schwada||no_popup[/img]At last Saturday’s Beastly Ball gala at the L.A. Zoo, the animals did their best to amuse hundreds of guests who paid $1,000 a head to support their continued captivity, welfare and upkeep. Sort of like Folsom Prison inmates singing the blues to entertain taxpayers? Well, not really.
Anyway, the Sumatran tiger twins paced magnificently in their semi-bucolic enclosure, a solitary snow leopard chewed on a glistening beef leg bone and a desert tortoise paddled his stubby pre-Jurassic legs futilely while being held by one zookeeper as another zookeeper allowed a boa constrictor to writhe around her arm to the twitterings of a covey of guests. Not to be outdone, an elephant playfully showered itself with dirt and straw and an American black bear turned its backside on the assembled guests and promptly…well, let’s just say the bear expressed its utter indifference to social niceties. Animals will be animals.
Yet even some of the Beastly Ball’s human participants also drifted from their moorings and, oblivious to social norms, careened dreamily into uncharted and philosophic regions. After all, human kooks will be human kooks.
They Love Warm Pavement
“In Texas, armadillos are road-kill,” I said, trying to be informative as I stood over a glass box containing an armadillo. This was one of many helpful special exhibits scattered along the zoo’s pathways to let Beastly Ballers have a little up-close-and-personal time with the least innocuous animals in its repertoire.
My remark seemed not to register with the cluster of Beastly Ballers admiring the armadillo. This little beastie does have a remarkable exoskeleton, apparently designed by nature to inspire Hollywood's sci-fi special effects maestros.
“Yes,” I noted, to no one in particular. “I mean armadillos are vulnerable. They get run over a lot. They like the warm pavement at night. They fall asleep on a highway and then get run over. In Texas…that is.” That explanation drew a severe look from a woman with her daughter. “I’ve never run over one myself,” I hurriedly added, as I felt myself sliding down a slippery slope.
“But can you imagine if the Hindus are right about reincarnation?” I mused hopefully, trying to gain some traction as harmless and sincere. But really clawing the air, like a turtle on its back.
Meanwhile, the armadillo neurotically scurried from one end of the box to the other. Like a wind-up toy bouncing off the walls. Hmmm.
“I mean, if Hindus have got it right, we could come back in an afterlife as an armadillo,” I intoned. “In fact, if they’re right, there’s a former human trapped in this creature’s body. I sure as hell would not like to come back in an after-life as an armadillo. To have that tiny, triangular head and those short little legs – it’s not going to win a beauty contest. It looks like a giant insect.” I paused, looking deeply into my tumbler of chardonnay.
May I Correct You, Sir?
“The armadillo is not an insect but an insectivore,” said the khaki-uniform-clad zookeeper, intervening helpfully. She had drawn armadillo duty for the Beastly Ball and was not about to let this teach-able moment slip by. “Actually, it’s a mammal. It nurses its young and gives live-birth.”
“So we’re almost on the same page – we’re mammals and so is this thingamabob,” I said, peering at the armadillo. “Very troubling. But I guess the armadillo clan decided to take a different evolutionary road – to Texas, where they get run over.” My muttered japery thankfully slipped into the ether unnoticed.
Still, it was damned eerie to think there could be a human soul lurking in that armadillo. What would that be like? Maybe in its previous incarnation, the soul inside the armadillo had been a highly accomplished violinist. Very cultured. With long delicate fingers and a finely-tuned mind that could organize and transform the indifferent atoms of air into vibrating, heart-stopping, thrilling helixes of sound-ecstasy. But maybe this violinist, I thought darkly, also treated their art as nothing more than a cash-cow, and the beauty they created was wholly counterfeit because their own soul was really nasty and Philistine. Wouldn’t it be plausible for the Hindu gods to decide that the violinist’s punishment for being such an unfulfilled person should be an afterlife lived as an armadillo?
That would be a claustrophobic hell. To have human consciousness and memory and yet be trapped in this evil-looking little body, nosing around in the straw for insects. Soooo, in a moment of lucidity, I speculated: maybe the armadillos in Texas are not being killed by accident! No, maybe despairing ex-violinist-armadillos are flinging themselves into traffic. Committing suicide. And who could blame them?
As a good citizen who votes and recycles, I kept these thoughts to myself and quietly moved to the next animal station. There, I admired the giant feet of a Dr. Seuss-designed California condor. That crazy tuft of hair at the back of the head, the mournful eyes (who’s living in there, I wondered – Richard Nixon?). “Nice talons,” I finally said.
“Actually, they’re just big chicken feet used for perching,” the zoo attendant said. “They look dangerous but a real raptor, like a hawk, has talons shaped very differently, for killing. The condor doesn’t kill with its feet. It doesn’t kill at all. It eats dead animals.”
(To be continued)
Mr. Schwada, a veteran Los Angeles newspaper and television journalist, may be contacted at john.schwada@gmail.com
