Zoo Stories

Zoo stories – INQ7.net is my column for today.

The Long View: Zoo stories

Zoo stories

First posted 23:43:56 (Mla time) January 09, 2005 
Manuel L. Quezon III 

 

HERE’S a story narrated to me by my father when I was still in short pants.

His sister once brought her eldest son-then very, very young-to the zoo. They went around, and she would tell him the names of all the animals. When they reached the hippopotamus enclosure, my aunt told her son. “‘Yan ay hipopotamo.”

“Hipopota ko, Mami?”

“Hinde. Hipopotamo,” corrected my aunt, pointing to the beast.

“Ah, Hipopota natin, Mami?”

End of story.

I don’t remember when I first went to the Manila Zoo, but I do remember the second-and the last-time I was there. In both instances I was with my father. I remember the Manila Zoo hippo very well. It looked like it had a bad case of eczema. Extremely depressed-looking, it wallowed in a pond of what appeared like Pasig River water, on which floated a couple of triangular juice-drink containers, several candy wrappers, and what must have been another wrapper already bleached by the sun. If the poor thing’s still alive today, scientists should study its amazing survival skills.

Actually, all the animals in the zoo, from what I can remember, wore a range of expressions-from total apathy at best, to a more general sort of grim fatalism (in the worst cases), to a look of suicidal desperation almost similar to the one homicidal maniacs take on shortly before they go on a rampage. The only animals that looked relatively contented were the giant crocodiles who basked in the sun with open mouths.

Oh, if those beasts in the zoo could speak, they’d probably sound like Didagen Dilangalen after a bad week at the House of Representatives.

If you want to get a good idea of what being imprisoned in the Manila Zoo does to animals, you should ask Filipinos of a certain age about the famous Spitting Monkey. He was all by his lonesome inside a large enclosure similar to a birdcage, either fussing about with his stools or glaring at people. There were large signs attached to the cage, warning visitors to keep away because the monkey liked to “manhandle” people-and to spit at them. Apparently, he liked grabbing unwary children who strayed too close-perhaps, to avenge the poor hippo’s having to live in a mini Smoky Mountain, as an act of solidarity-I don’t know. Naturally, upon being informed by their parents of what the sign said, the children would try to be sly and creep up to the cage, and then run back to mommy or daddy screaming with delight. (I guess if the monkey had been able to spit on the kids, or had shaken them up, they wouldn’t have been so gleeful.) Alas, the last time I saw the monkey, it was in a peaceful mood.

I’ve always detested monkeys, but there was one monkey who really made me laugh. I wish I knew what kind of monkey it was. My dad pointed out that it looked like the Ayatollah Khomenei, and it did: a rather sour Ayatollah at that. We must’ve stayed in front of the cage for 10 minutes or more, just cracking up.

A decade later, about 1994, I think, I went with some friends to the “mini-zoo” at Glico’s at the Glorietta, which was quite the rage then-boyfriends would even take their girlfriends there as a “cute” prelude to a date. If the Manila Zoo smelt bad, looked sad and exuded the air of a concentration camp, Glico’s had the atmosphere of (I would guess) a Singaporean detention facility: spotless, clinical, obsessively organized and just as devoid of freedom. The advantage of Glico’s was that its animals looked well-fed.

There was a little “petting zoo” at the time (and no, I’m sure this wasn’t the reason for the zoo’s popularity with lovers-you’re taking the power of subliminal suggestion too far). There was a sheep in a pen so small the animal couldn’t have turned around if it wanted to. There was a calf in a tiny (for cows, that is) corral. Some chickens and ducks were kept in a little enclosure too, and looked uneasy in each other’s company. You could, if you wanted to, buy a little hay or feed and give them to the animals. I still felt sorry for the animals but, later on, when I met the owner of the mini-zoo (who later on moved his creatures to Goldcrest where he set up the Quest science museum, now long gone), I learned that the animals weren’t kept there too long; and so I would assume that the poor calf must be enjoying the sun in some field now, with his friends, while the poor Manila Zoo animals soldier on, like prisoners of war, with no hope of release.

Today’s Manila Zoo was apparently founded by Arsenio Lacson, and its site represents the last surviving patch of a much bigger pre-war public park. The origins of the zoo are explained in the “Streets of Manila,” where there’s this tidbit: “During the American period [Jardin Botanico, the Royal Botanical Garden of Manila by decree of Governor General Norzagaray in 1858] … was known as the Mehan Gardens, named, in 1913, after an American sanitation chief, John C. Mehan. Up to 1941 it served as the city’s botanical garden and zoo (until the animals, including a young elephant named Goyo, died of malnutrition during the Japanese Occupation).”

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READER Ben Vallejo has these comments on my last column: “I have to disagree with you. Many Filipinos are not detached [from] the sea. Probably the city slickers are, but as a marine scientist, I know that fisherfolk are [as] concerned [in] conserving the seas as you and I are.

“What drives them to destructive fishing practices is poverty. They know that education may give their kids a chance to escape [from poverty] but who can get a good education now? Probably, only the rich can.

“But there is good news. Our coastal people have started to conserve their own resources.”

The Long View: Seas of our minds

Seas of our minds

First posted 22:59:29 (Mla time) January 05, 2005 
Manuel L. Quezon III 

 

FOR a people living in an archipelago, we seem to have a curiously detached attitude toward the sea. Few of us seem to love it. We may plunder it, viewing it as an irresistible treasury, a cornucopia which we can loot with impunity. The leisured class among us may view it with a hunter’s affection, that curious mingling of bloodlust and aesthetic sensibility that moves the wealthy to tears when they recount their struggle to land a swordfish. The rest of us think of the sea as either a place to bring the family to for an afternoon or a weekend, where children can build sand castles while the menfolk guzzle beer, and women can bathe in the sea, as long as they are clad in our Catholic version of the purdah: large, loose T-shirt slipped over an equally modest bathing suit.

Our fellow citizens who make their living from the sea, do they, at least, love the sea from which they derive their livelihood? It seems they don’t; it would be a curious love indeed that manifests itself in soft-drink bottles packed with dynamite, or slightly more sophisticated grenades that detonate on beds of coral, pulverizing the coral and providing a temporary bounty of stunned fishes. And yet one cannot be too outraged at fishermen who do this, for in the eyes of society, our supposedly egalitarian society which proclaims the virtue of hard work, fisherfolk are like peasants: essential beings, but not honored for it, and, indeed, despised for the darkness of their skin and their hard work which serves as a reproach to those who make millions through the manipulation of figures.

Can they, who are neglected by a government impotent to prevent the looting of our fishing waters by foreign trawlers, who are given little financial assistance and then viewed as subversives when they try to organize in defense of their rights, be expected to love the sea whose bounty seems reserved for foreigners and sportsmen? Hardly.

Still, the fact remains that between those who fish to provide our dinner tables with seafood and those who fish with cyanide to stock the aquariums of the world, the result is the irreversible destruction of our aquatic resources. Understanding why fishermen club dolphins to death, when all the dolphins want to do is frolic with them or merely feed themselves, and condoning the brutal liquidation of those most popular of marine mammals are two separate things. We must understand–but we must resist brutality, too. Then again emptied seas sometimes only yield up dolphins, the meat of which can be sold, but cheaply.

My memories of the sea seem so colorless compared to the memories of our elders. I have seen, from the deck of a liner heading out to sea from Manila Bay, the silhouette of Fort Drum, that island cocooned in concrete with its long-silenced naval guns, in the evening twilight. I have seen the sandy beaches of Sicogon, the whale sharks of Donsol, and enjoyed the sight of deadly lion fish in the beaches of Davao. The dark, oily waters of Manila Bay and the Cavite beaches we’d visit when I was a child. But everywhere, man’s injuries to the sea have been evident. Soft-drink bottles, slippers, broken glass and rusting cans. And everywhere, plastic. Plastic in all shapes, sizes and for countless uses, mingled with fish, poisoned by the effluvia of freighters and noxious leaks from tankers. Sea life, where one can still see it, is accompanied everywhere by death or dying. The death of sea creatures at the hands of the more sadistic sort who fish for sport and harpoon for fun, the dying of scarred coral reefs and entire ecosystems.

My father remembers seeing giant clams. He had memories of steaming from island to island, and of their ship at anchor in the evenings, of watching sea snakes trying to slither up the sides of the ship, attracted by the light from the portholes. He can remember the sea when it was relatively clean, and flying fish were abundant. At home we have pictures of him, not even a teenager yet, on the deck of one of these ships, proudly displaying fish caught while at sea and beaming with innocent pride.

These photos today send shudders through friends who love the sea. They are a reminder of how things were, and the mentality which seemed harmless once upon a time, but which helped bring the alarming state of affairs of our country’s seas.

An uncle remembers the (now) Aurora and Quezon Provinces of his youth, when people would set out in small boats to haul in tuna in such enormous quantities that boats were often in danger of being swamped. His memories are joyful ones: of abundance and community spirit.

The laughter of that generation will not be heard again, for those straits have long become ghostly expanses of emptiness. The tuna have long been fished out of the waters of his youth, and now only the merchant marines of more efficient states can catch tuna in abundance. But there is, too, the grisly, residual memory of the residents of Baler, Aurora, itself founded after the first settlement was destroyed by a tsunami in the 18th century.

The oceans of our memories are a catalogue of humanity’s sins. Not only against the sea and its defenseless denizens, but against ourselves. I thought of this as I read articles remarking on how the tsunami’s effects were worsened by the rampant destruction of coastal mangrove forests.

NOKR

In gaharasiber MURING-WIEN cyberathaus you can read about the National Next Of Kin Registry:

The National Next Of Kin Registry is used primarily in the USA, Canada and Mexico. Other Countries (OC) are welcome and encouraged to register their family members and an emergency next of kin point of contact. NOKR also recommends uploading a photograph if one is available to expedite an individual’s identification if needed. If you are registering an individual outside the USA, Canada or Mexico please add additional contact information in the comments area of the registration form.

Our country should adopt this.

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