Zoo Story Thomas French

What a well written and complex story.  It raises many questions that need to be reflected on for the future.  The zoos started out as terrible places in human history, torture facilities for animals that actually contributed to the destruction of wildlife. But the shift in ecological perspective in the 60’s has also shifted the zoos into the arks for endangered and disappearing life.

Here is a story of a conflicting needs:  How to help the animals, how to raise the money;  The sense of being overworked by the staff; the need to grow and get publicity to maintain the facility that is the concern of the director.  It gives great insight in to the competing demands and the social fabric of the zoo staff which is stressed throughout what should have been a time of great success.  Our non-profits are in a constant tension to do their mission and to survive in economic difficulties.  The conflicts within the zoo is a classic clash of styles and job descriptions.  But the problem with seeking dollars there is a fuzzy line that separates promotion, self-promotion, and profit taking from the mission of a non-profit.  Some very questionable decisions were made by the people in charge.

The stories are also a part of a growing dialogue that demonstrates the intelligence and the individual emotions and personality of the animals.  It brings the reader to an important point of thinking about the animals as species with rights and needs and much more than exhibits and entertainment.

There is no easy answer to the future role of zoos, but we have come to understand that they have a much more important need to fulfill now than they ever had:  Deforestation, ozone, climate change, and a burgeoning human population threatening all life forms.  It is also an expose of a non-profits and the ease by which the board made questionable and dangerous decisions. 

The animals, the people and the stories are all well told.  Kate worked at a Zoo, I do not have any reference so I cannot say whether this is a typical zoo and zoo story or not.

Welcome to the savage and surprising world of Zoo Story, an unprecedented account of the secret life of a zoo and its inhabitants, both animal and human. Based on six years of research, the book follows a handful of unforgettable characters at Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo: an alpha chimp with a weakness for blondes, a ferocious tiger who revels in Obsession perfume, and a brilliant but tyrannical CEO known as El Diablo Blanco.Zoo Story crackles with issues of global urgency: the shadow of extinction, humanity's role in the destruction or survival of other species. More than anything else, though, it's a dramatic and moving true story of seduction and betrayal, exile and loss, and the limits of freedom on an overcrowded planet - all framed inside one zoo reinventing itself for the 21st century.Thomas French, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, chronicles the action with vivid power: Wild elephants soaring above the Atlantic on their way to captivity. Predators circling each other in a lethal mating dance. Primates plotting the overthrow of their king. The sweeping narrative takes the listener from the African savannah to the forests of Panama and deep into the inner workings of a place some describe as a sanctuary and others condemn as a prison.All of it comes to life in the book's four-legged characters. Zoo Story shows us how these remarkable individuals live, how some die, and what their experiences reveal about the human desire to both exalt and control nature.