7 Things: Zoos – #6
Amarillo
When you drive low across the country, Amarillo is on the way, so we’ve ended up stopping there on several occasions. The exit that we usually stay at has the best plot for prairie dog watching I’ve ever seen and some old structures that make it feel totally Old West.
Amarillo also has the worst zoo I’ve ever endured. Not because it was small, not because it was in a crappy neighborhood, but because it was a poorly-tended dump. Of course, if it was a shithole to me, imagine how the poor animals felt. And the animals looked as if they felt exactly that way.
Zoos like the Amarillo Zoo is why zoos get a bad rap.
I have seen some shortcuts taken at zoos that have made me growl. Like the wood shelves in the rock hyrax enclosure at the Los Angeles Zoo. Wood shelves? They are called ROCK hyrax.
Anyway, I’ve seen some unfortunate easy-ways-out. The Amarillo Zoo, though, is the only one where I’ve seen them use a kiddie pool in an enclosure.
There wasn’t much worth photographing in Amarillo, but I got a few shots to document the tragedy.
