There's a zoo near our house. It's not a San-Diego-scale zoo. It's not even a San-Francisco-scale zoo. Even though San Jose is larger in area and population than San Francisco, it's the City that gets the larger zoo. I still haven't grown completely used to folks referring to San Francisco as "the City" as if there were no other cities on the planet. And heaven forbid you call it "San Fran" or, even worse, "Frisco". The same Left-coast, yuppie-lifestyle, Audi-driving, performance-art-patron tit-heads who roll they eyes at Frisco have no problem talking about "LA" or *shudder* "the OC."
So San Jose has a bit of an inborn inferiority complex. Everything is smaller and nearly impossible to get to via public transportation.
The zoo near us is called Happy Hollow. It's one of those peri-Disneyland children's theme parks with merry-go-rounds and Viking ships, all suffering under too many layers of paint. If you can dial back your unnaturally high expectations, it's really a lot of fun, especially if you're under seven years old.
Likewise, the associated zoo is rather modest. The largest animal on exhibit is an exotic ruminant. The beasties who get the most attention from me are the jaguar, the fishing cat, and the capybaras.
The second Tuesday of the month is Dollar Day. One dollar gets you admission to the park and zoo. My wife has made the Tuesday day at the zoo a tradition. I'd heard all about it from my son. I'd even followed the dramas of the sudden death of the zoo's old jaguar and their search for a replacement, and the surprise birth of the wallaby. I hadn't actually gone to the zoo with my family until recently. Sometimes it's difficult to take a random Tuesday off work.
When I finally entered the gates, I felt a weird sense of recognition as we walked through the park. There were the stepping stones I'd heard so much about. This was the pond where the swans had swum until they'd been moved out. Here was the petting zoo, the reptile area, and the old-fashioned water pump at exactly the right height for little people to pump water into the moat around Guinea Pig Island.
Guinea Pig Island occupies the space of a fat canoe. Overhead, colorful parrots perch on gnarled, dead branches, shaded by a canopy of trees. The birds sit passively, wearied from hearing "Polly wanna cracker?" 300 times a day.
The moat running around Guinea Pig Island spans about a foot and runs about eight inches deep. It's formed from smooth, colored concrete of a dirty goldenrod hue. The slight dome of packed earth matches the moat perfectly.
A few low hunks of wood break up the monotony of the smooth ground, giving the guinea pigs something to shelter under and crawl through.
The guinea pigs themselves spend most of their time sleeping or rummaging through the remnants of their last meal. I didn't actually count them, but it looked like less than 20 guinea pigs made their home on Guinea Pig Island.
Early on in my wife's visits, she thought to ask a zoo employee about the island. After all, Happy Hollow may be a small zoo, but an exhibit of guinea pigs is exceptionally pitiful.
It turns out that not only is Guinea Pig Island pitiful, it's also rather morbid. The guinea pigs are all marked for death.
The large snakes lounging in the reptile section require live prey. They eat guinea pigs.
Some practical-minded zoo person decided that, if the zoo needs to keep guinea pigs to feed the snakes, they might as well put them out on display.
Kids stroll by, pointing and giggling at the guinea pigs. No one notices the high turnover in the island population. The smaller kids wait in an impatient gaggle to work the pump handle and spill more water into the moat.
The guinea pigs lounge and doze and nibble their lettuce leaves, completely unaware that less than a foot of water dooms them to a bone-crunching, asphyxiating death in the crushing coils of a giant snake.
There's a metaphor there, I'm sure.
Pakeha