Speaking of Goats

Woodland Park Zoo 1982, Fair in the Farm - Robin Wendell, Ernie Rose & goat Eris

I’ve noticed some people out there, on the internet, and elsewhere yammering on, in what I am sure are very well meaning ways, about how to have a happy in life.  Some would lead you to believe that an encyclopedic knowledge of everything from psychology, astrology, numerology, the I Ching, tarot, plus a smattering of Sanskrit and the lost art of paper folding are absolute necessities. I have nothing at all against any of these studies to provide illumination or guidance in life, I does bother me though when some folks act like their personal system, new age or traditional, has all the answers.  Frankly that gets my goat.

Speaking of goats, I used to work at a Zoo. In the course of my duties, which, contrary to public opinion, were not at all glamorous, and consisted mostly of scraping fecal matter off various surfaces, I have been bitten by a tiger, chased by a giraffe, and have attempted to appear calm and cheerful before the public while bats crawled up my legs.  I also have been stepped on, butted and had a significant portion of my hair chewed off by the species, Capra hircus.  In other words, there is hope.  I know the heights and depths of one of the best self-help aides available to man -- I know goats.

Let me say at the start that I know that goats are not human.  Most animal management types scorn an anthropomorphic attitude -- baby gorillas in little pink tutus -- ugh.  However anyone observing a group of animals for an extended period of time will notice that there is a specific energy that is manifested by a particular species.  This energy is in a pure form; that is, unlike your standard human, a goat doesn’t need a nervous breakdown to know something is wrong or a psychologist to fix it.  This is because they do naturally what we humans find so difficult -- they live and feel and act smack-dab in the present.  No lingering doubts regarding the moldy alfalfa of yesterday taints their enjoyment of todays repast.  

A typical day at the Zoo would start by me letting the animals out into the yards.  I would sometimes let the sheep out first, before the goats, because that would be the only peace the poor things had all day.  Once those goat hooves hit the tarmac it was all over.  In three-seconds-flat they would evaluate the various potentialities for food, shelter, and opportunities to get into trouble and then claimed them for their own.  Their modus operandi for achieving these aims was brute force and intimidation.  Goats are not subtle.  Their idea of a good time is to hit something with their heads until it does what they want.  Once outside, they would often form a charming tableau on a large rock pile where they would keep one eye on the sheep flock to make sure they were reasonably miserable, and then scan the pathways looking for children or feeble adults so they could snatch food, cameras or articles of clothing, which they would then eat trample or shred.  Their attitude during this activity was gleeful enjoyment.  No guilt or hesitation, just pure impulsive action.

Even when the goats were at rest, gnawing on a light meter or a baby bottle they remained alert to any and all possibilities for adventure.  One of their favorite pursuits was the constant assault on gates and fences.  Goats can open fences that would have baffled Houdini.  I suspect they have prehensile lips.  This talent resulted in many goat escapades into obscure and unprotected buildings where they would terrorize rabbits, chickens and other small animals and eat inappropriate food stuffs that caused them to bloat up like the balloons in Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade.  

Our goats were sturdy, graceful and quick.  Even though they appeared to be built entirely of angles, like a box with legs, they could balance on a bolder, sideswipe a sheep, and keep an eye open for dropped candy bars, all with apparently effortless grace.  However, if you tried to lead them in a direction that was not of their choosing, they had this trick they did with their torso and leg muscles that quite effectively glued them to the ground, immovable by anything less than a small forklift.  

Most of all the goats were the masters of endurance.  Hot and cold weather, unusual food, getting along with their peers, they either put up with it or assimilated it to produce more of their specialty -- obnoxious, but most of the time, irresistible goat behavior.

So, how does help me understand life?  Well, for one thing, I can see now how some ‘top of the heap’ kinds of folks combine a need for no restraints on their own whimsical behavior  with a need to be in control of others at all times. Also their need to think they have all the answers.  Perhaps when the next authority figure is kind enough to clue me into the “real” facts of life I can just look for the goat eyes behind their persona and consider their own fears or a need for liberation.  It seems significant that it was always the goats, who were so obsessed with keeping the sheep in line, that were long gone when we found the hasp undone and the gate to the yard was open.  

So the pundits and proselytizers can continue to pontificate but they won't seem quite so irritating any more.  Maybe they just haven't learned the true meaning of the word - capricious.  They could learn a lesson from my favorite goat “Eris”, on how to caper though life with a little more grace.  Next time one of them crosses my path I will look past them to see her, standing at the top of her rock pile, surveying the possibilities of leadership and obnoxiousness. The epitome of ambition, persistence and block-headed obstinacy the light in her eyes at the sight of a helpless child with a cookie was both instant and inevitable.  She thought she was right -- not because the sheep or other  people were wrong, but because she knew how to both endure and to still have fun. She was no respecter of persons and yet there was not a malicious bone in her whole rambunctious body. I can’t help but imagine that if someday they drop the big one and most of humanity is reduced to smoking slime, that through the clearing smoke we will see familiar shape emerge-- Eris on her charred rock pile.  Around her all the fences will be blown down and with a gleam in her eye she will leap down and conquer the world.

©copyright Robin Wendell 2009

Never Trust a Gorilla

Yesterday was a ‘Feed the Poor’ day where I got out of the house and sliced cake-pie-and-pud for the Saint James Cathedral Kitchen. I was also schooled in the mysteries of ‘mammoth salad making’ and mastered the art of ‘colossal casserole collaboration’, some fun!   During my extreme celery chopping exertions I had a vision of the many, many veggies I had chopped for hungry monkeys during my Zoo-keeping days of yore. Celery was never one of their favorite food-items. When their food basket arrived they would up-end it, tossing broccoli and celery aside, looking for the good stuff, grapes and yams. However, I mused, none of the primates that I met after those days, (including some of my dates on match.com - (before I met the man of my dreams), can rival my first gorilla - Wanto.

Episode TWO in the Zoo Stories Series - True tales to dip into, dwell on and that occasionally disgust.

You can take it from me. Never trust a Gorilla!

I had barely recovered from my Rat in a Blender experience, at my new Assistant Zoo-Keeping job in 1976 at the WPZ animal nursery when other concerns with the animals I was helping to raise began to surface.

In 1976, WPZ Gorillas Nina and Pete, produced a little brown bundle of joy-- WANTO.

Wanto was nearing 6 months of age when I arrived upon the Zoo nursery scene to assist Nursery Keeper Violet Sunde in his care.  He must have been a beautiful baby but baby, he was a handful then!  Imagine a miniature brown Arnold Schwarzenegger with large-lashed eyes and a will of iron. Violet had raised him since his “incubator-days rescue”, after first-time mom Nina dropped him on his little head once too often. He was a placid little jewel with Violet.  It was me that he liked to put the fear of god into when she wasn’t around. I had been taught disciplinary gorilla-mom signals. A low harsh grunt and chest thumping were supposed to work wonders. Ha!  Inevitably, when alone the Wan-ton, as we called him, would ignore my attempts to say, stop him from trying to eat the electrical socket, and there would be a big tugging match -- me venus baby- godzilla.  These bouts resulted in a varied assortment of hand and finger-shaped bruises on my arms that were very difficult to explain at the gym, or while out dancing in my 1930’s sleeveless gowns.  “Er, Right, sure, the..Gorilla....gave you those bruises.”  Like most cases of Zoo-Gorilla abuse my plight was destined to stay behind the scenes.  Or so I thought.

1976 was the year of the Zoo’s First Jungle Party, a fund raising effort that all staff were expected to participate in.  What fun, I thought, and I immediately acquired a vintage strapless sarong dress that featured flamboyant orange flowers -- very “Dorothy Lamour”.  The night of the party I showed up in my glamorous new attire ready to charm party goers with something like a tiny, tame, cute baby kinkajou shown through the nursery glass.  But Noooo.  My task for the evening was to take my nemesis, baby Wanto, outside to the exercise area and show him off to various semi-inebriated semi-big-wigs.  Great, I thought, just great. 

I trudged outside with my charge, his little sweet legs clamped around my waist like oversized rusted-shut bolt cutters, and I smiled, at least somewhat successfully, as the then Mayor -- Charley Royer and his encourage of perky-girl interns and city hall cronies drank champagne and made ‘hilarious’ comments about Fay Raye, King Kong and other raucous burbling quips too numerous to mention.  

After 5 minutes of this banter Wanto became bored, and in an attempt to liven things up a bit slipped his little paw into a vise grip on the bodice of my strapless dress and began to pull....and pull...and PULL!  The group watching were amazingly entertained by this, supposing, I guess, that it was all part of some gorilla peep show we had planned for the evening.  I, on the other hand, was, not-entertained-at-all, by this display of playful gorilla jua de vie, and a feeling of frenzied and doomed deja vu took hold of me as I, without seeming to deviate from a caring and sensitive pose by screaming and flailing at him like a crazed lunatic, attempted to remove his hand from my dress.

We wrestled for a while, Wanto pulling and grunting gleefully, while I said unmentionable things to him between my clenched teeth. Finally, in fear of loosing my temper and my dress I finally gave up and fled the scene, yelling, “little Wanto needs a nap,” Back in the nursery.  Mr, congeniality Immediately climbed down and scampered over to Violets lap, looked up at her lovingly with his big brown innocent eyes, and gave me a happy grin.  I looked like a good-time girl down on the waterfront after the fleet has come in.  My dress was perilously close to half-mast and the gardenia originally over my left ear now dangled in a tangled squishy mass that obscured the sight of my right eye.  “Wanto-one Me-zero. 

I forget how it all ended -- my gorilla-mom days.  I think I was transfered to the Aviary and lost track of my little friend for a while. However later when he was grown up and housed in the main gorilla area it was uncanny how, when I came in view he would perk-up and start to finger a rock or small turd and eye me with a speculative grin. I began to take the long way around to the office.  It was then and shall always be -- Wanto-one, me-zero. 

Take my advice, never trust a gorilla.

©copyright 2009 Robin Wendell