I got in trouble at the St. Louis Zoo!

[equine623]

Rozzie - a little insight on the thinking behind that if I may. You pet the pig, no problem. Some kid pets the pig, fingers look like baby carrots and chomp! Kid screams, parents go berserk. Start threatening lawsuits and claiming their child is going to die of swine flu. Pig then has to be moved off exhibit for quarantine, and/or euthanized depending on the board of directors of the zoo.

No really - its happened - I'm not kidding. Parents are stupid.

I agree, there should have been signs. But FWIW, the staff may have been told to tell people not to let anyone touch the pig, because people that go to zoos all seem to think they can pet whatever they want. And as to the argument of oh the wall should be higher - well ok then people complain their kids can't see the animals. Zoos have to follow all sorts of regulations, even as to exhibit fencing height. Money is usually tight. They do the best they can. Some are better than others.

To me, its about respect. If I came into your house, started feeding your dog chocolate and potato chips and let your pet bird out to fly because hey its a bird....its the same as going into a zoo and thinking you know what is best for the animals there. Trust me, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that you will never get to see. As I said, some zoos are better than others but most times the staff is there because they love their jobs.

OK I'll go back to my dungeon now

 

[Rozzie]

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self edit

I'll just say this:

Please be careful about making assumptions. I have great respect for animals, and for zoos that do a good job in taking care of their animals. I've got a pretty good idea about what goes on behind the scenes at zoos. I also understand that parents let their children run rampant. It so happens that these particular employees should have been paying attention to that exact situation instead of worrying about a pig's butt getting scratched by an adult. (This was before swine flu worries, by the way. It's been a while since I've been to the zoo.) Scratching a pot bellied pig's butt is hardly comparable to releasing an animal or feeding an animal poison (which is what chocolate is to a dog).

 

[equine623]

I apologize if I made assumptions. But the simple fact is that you were petting an animal, were asked to stop, and continued to do so. By your own admission. Why people think they can go to the zoo and do whatever they want, I don't understand. My frustration comes from having seen many many animals be put down or pulled off exhibit because the general population (not you specifically) feel like the rules don't apply to them. I'm sorry that my emotions got the better of me.

And yes, I know chocolate is poison to dogs.

 

[StevenW.]

I went to the exact zoo and did the same thing

and I got in trouble for petting the geese and ducks they had there

and I also destoyed my camera..... it fell in the water

 

[kla37]

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http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/extraordinary_animals/83542 I'm from the Chicago area and I remember the story about the little boy. Binti was/is a big hero there!

 

[mandelyn]

No one gets to be entitled with animals that aren't their own property unless they're invited to do so. It should go without saying not to touch the wild animals at the zoo, shouldn't need to have a sign there saying that. The employees have to put up with A LOT of nonsense from grown-ups, let alone children. They don't know if you went on research to Antarctica to study penguins, or watched a 1/2 hour episode on National Geographic, or simply wanted to touch it because it was close and cute looking.

You don't tease the lion because you're safe behind glass. Why? Because of the people who work there don't want to care for an angry and frustrated lion.

THOUSANDS of people go to the zoo everyday. The pig doesn't have germs... but everyone coming inside the zoo could. They don't want sick animals. Let's say 100 people scratched the pig's butt that day. It wasn't just you. How many of those people wanted to touch it because they love pigs and have one at home? Could they be unknowingly carrying a pig borne illness on their hands? Who knows. Better to say the pig is off limits and no one gets to scratch it? You bet. Biosecurity isn't just for your chicken coop in your back yard.

The last zoo I went to was the Nuremberg zoo in Germany. I watched a penguin try and try to get at my pepsi bottle on the other side of the glass. It was hilarious! Short little barrier I could have reached into. Would it be cool to pet one? Of course! Did I? No. That's just something you don't do unless you're invited. Did I watch other people do that and get yelled at in German for it? Yeah, that was more hilarious than the penguin going for the pepsi bottle.

In the bird of prey area, the only thing between you and those big meat eating beaks was chainlink. One of the birds had dropped a bone outside of it's enclosure and it wanted it back. Did I give it back? No, it could have been from the bird next door. Not my bird to feed or take care of. I took the bone and put it in the garbage, knowing how some people can be. Either a kid wanting to feed it and not knowing any better or a grown up that should know better.

I used to volunteer at the Cincinnati Zoo and the sense of entitlement from people because they think they know something (or actually do know something) about an animal is unreal. Or people don't know anything at all about animals, and there I am chasing down an escaped goat romping around because a guest left the gate open. They act like their individual action isn't going to have an effect, or that it will be ok... or you know, no sign says not to so it should be ok. Multiply that one action by the thousands of people who are in the zoo that day, and some days it can just be ridiculous.

Perfectly friendly animals are locked in behind glass. Gates have locks on them. Petting areas are eliminated. Feeding areas are restricted to a couple of goats, some shows will have a question/answer portion but no more touching. What people do as an individual affects how the zoo may be run from then on. Who wants to go to a zoo that is completely littered with signs saying what you shouldn't do? It's already on the bears, big cats, monkeys (should go without saying...)... are penguins next because people can't keep their hands out? Or we all going to be restricted to a viewing room for every single species in a zoo or so far away we can't hardly see anything?

 

[Rozzie]

I think it's also easy to forget that my post was talking about an animal in the PETTING area of the zoo. An animal that was in an area with very LOW fences, with wide gaps specifically so that the public could get close to this animal, and others in this area. An animal that had vending machines of animal feed right next to its pen.

I wasn't talking about lions or tigers or bears. I was talking about the PETTING ZOO portion, where the zoo specifically allows animals to be fed and even touched. Biosecurity was hardly the issue here.

Though I didn't go into it in my post, and really shouldn't need to, the employees in question were clearly summer college interns. They were acting SCARED of the alpacas and llamas a few pens away and clearly had no idea how to handle basic care for those animals. At the time that one saw fit to warn me about scratching the poor pig's butt, he walked right PAST parents with children who were climbing the fence on the goat pen and feeding them ice cream cone leftovers. Clearly incompetent help. And, there is NO WAY they didn't see that the kids were climbing the fence. Perhaps the pig had bitten someone else recently. Perhaps I was an easier target -- small female, seemingly alone at the zoo -- versus two adults who might become irate if little children were told to stop what they were doing. Or, perhaps the kids were scared of the pig themselves, since they were CLEARLY scared of the llamas.

And, quite frankly, whoever at the zoo allowed a pig to be displayed in a pen like the one this pig was in should have been fired. if it had been a "wild" animal, it would have had more care taken to meet its basic social and mental needs. However, being a "farm" type animal, much less attention is paid to these things at many zoos. So long as the pen is pretty clean, doesn't smell, and the animal has food and water, people tend to ignore anything else in the petting zoo section (except, sometimes, goats but I'm convinced that's more about PEOPLE watching them climb, not about giving the goats something to do.)

Didn't seem necessary to go into a story in this much detail. Sigh.

 

[Whispering Winds]

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That is true, but I have never heard of a murdering pack of Penquins.

 

[sheila3935]

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Me too. At least I have a rooster named Penguin thats probably as close as I will get to owning one.

 

[Rozzie]

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Me too. At least I have a rooster named Penguin thats probably as close as I will get to owning one.

I have a quail named Penguin.