I ran across this terrible story tonight and it brought back memories…When I was a little kid, maybe 4 years old, we were visiting relatives in northern Arkansas. One day, we drove over into Tennessee and visited The Memphis Zoo. And the jaguars escaped.
It was a nice day, and we were having a great time wandering through the place. Our whole family (at the time) was there: Mom, Dad, my sister Diane and my brother Nick, who was maybe 2, and in a stroller.
We came to the jaguar cage, which was literally a big metal cage, right out in the open. (I guess this was before the age of zoo enlightenment.) There were at least two jaguar pacing in the cage, and we stood there for a little while, admiring them.
Diane turns around all of a sudden and says, “Daddy, I think the cage door is open.” And it was. It was ajar about 8-10 inches, in fact.
We had recently passed a little zoo office, and Dad told Diane to run back and sound the alarm. She took off, and it was about then that one of the jaguar noticed the cage door. The cat walked over to investigate, and we started getting worried. Dad looked around for some place to put his family, but the only thing available was the back of a zoo pickup truck. We all climbed in.
The jaguar eased out of the cage.
Diane came back, and clambered up with us. Other zoo-goers noticed the jaguar and a mild uproar ensued. Somewhere in there, zookeepers with tranquilizer guns showed up and shot the cat, who had never gone nuts or anything. Maybe he was having a hard time believing his good fortune.
Later, back home, Mom helped me write a 4-year-old’s version of the events, and I mailed it in to The Zoo Revue, a little local live TV show for kids, hosted by our little local zookeeper. (My hometown has a pretty good zoo.)
He read my letter on the air, and said something like, “Matt, thanks for writing. You have a great imagination for a boy your age. Of course, something like that could never actually happen.”
Crushed me.
I learned then and there how powerful a one-way medium like television can be. That experience still chaps my ass, to this day.
