The Devil, He Be A Hidin'

I am a sucker for zoos.

Tell me you’ve got some sort of exotic critter in a cage out back and I’ll cough up a few bucks to see it.

To that end, I’ve visited some marvelous zoos in this country and across the globe. The San Diego Zoo tops my list closely followed by the Royal Dutch Zoo in Amsterdam and the Emperor Valley Zoo in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Woodland Park Zoo is a must-see whenever I’m in Seattle, as is the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens when Barb and I visit Palm Springs. Atlanta has a fine zoo. So does Honolulu.

Evansville, Indiana, the town where I grew up, has a wonderful zoo — Mesker Park. I donated my pet caiman Albert to their reptile exhibit after it bit me when I was 12.

But I’m also a fan of roadside zoos which can be a little sketchy. A decrepit chain link fence was all that separated my wife and me from a nervously pacing Bengal tiger at a small zoo in the Florida panhandle. I even once paid $5 to see a small black bear that was chained behind a gas station in Tennessee.

During a visit to Sydney, Australia last week, I was excited to find a zoo within walking distance of our hotel. Surprisingly, though, in that beautiful, clean, modern metropolis, the zoo fit into the latter category rather than the former.

Along with the kangaroos, wallabies, and wombats that I’d expected to see in Australia, the Sydney Wildlife Zoo claimed to have a couple of the world’s most unusual animals — a duckbill platypus and a Tasmanian devil. Taking little more than a cursory look at the more common critters, I hurried along the pathway to the devil’s cage only to find it empty. Same with the platypus exhibit.

They might as well have claimed to have a chupacabra and a Sasquatch on display.

Perhaps, though, the devil and the platypus were taking refuge in the nocturnal animal exhibit where instead of infrared lighting, there was no illumination at all. The entire exhibit was in complete darkness.

A handful of youthful employees clothed all in khaki who were stationed throughout the zoo offered only directions to where we could get our picture taken with a koala.

It was an expensive and disappointing experience.

But I’ll probably fall for it again.

I’m a sucker for zoos.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]