Jill

Zoos, we pack our children into vehicles, we drive from the suburbs, we pay a fee at the gate, the most expensive one so we get the refillable drink with the bendy straw, we point at all of the sad animals, and then we go home to a zoo of our own making.

There is an orangoutang named Jill at the Kansas City Zoo and when you stand outside of her enclosure, that’s a pleasant synonym for cage, she softens the corners of her mouth and makes eye contact with you, the gentle kind not the I want to rip your throat out kind. She’ll hold your gaze like a human would and you begin to wonder, who is beneath that orange fury suit? Maybe a gentle old woman who has taken some time to evaluate her life and is now dressed up as an ape because that’s the thing she’s always wanted to do.

Jill’s eyes have the knowing of a human person who has done a lot of living. I want to ask Jill, should I move back to India? What’s next? How do I get out of the cage? See, the sad thing about Jill is that I think she knows she’s in a cage that she will never leave. This is what makes her eyes so human. By acknowledging it, she has given up the pacing that makes an animal look wild.

From what I understand zoo animals today have not been poached from wild places but have been bred into these institutions. Jill has never known the jungle floor and neither have the smaller monkeys, the hippo does not know the mud of a river bottom, and the polar bear has never hunted living animals, but part of them still knows.

The polar bear paces back and forth against cool glass and like a nervous tick, plunges herself into the pool. The monkeys are listless, we call this zoochosis actually, and even though they have been bred to believe they are in the place they belong they still know there’s more.

Without being told or shown they know there is something that feels more natural, more free.

Guess what, we know there's more too.

Three years ago you could have peeked into my office window and I would have held your gaze, not in a comforting way like Jill but in a sad hallow way. You would have asked yourself, does she know she’s in a cage?

I did know but I had given up the thing that makes me wild, the pacing and the dangerous excitement of hunting life that feels more natural.

The zookeepers and that skeptical friend I used to have would argue, if you let her into the wild she’ll die. She does not know how to hunt and forage and happiness is as foreign to her as the plains of Africa.

They were right, well not completely but mostly.

I opened my cage door and I had no fucking idea what to do. For a while I thought about not leaving and just staying in the sad place that had been designated for me, It’s safe here after all and the company is other sad animals with hallow gazes and not the I want to rip your throat out kind. Eventually, I did leave, with the realization that I could carry my cage with me.

I could take sadness to all corners of the world, into slums in India and beaches in Sri Lanka and I could almost look like a creature who never lived in a cage unless you looked too close and noticed that the hollowness hadn’t left my eyes.

I’ve watched quite a few wildlife rehabilitation shows on Netflix and any idiot knows that the reintroduction of an animal to the wild is a slow one. The falcon with the broken wing has to be taught to fly again, and the little otter needs to see other otters cracking clams open with a rock before they do it themselves. They just need to be reminded that they are wild.

I am different from Jill, the small monkeys, the hippo, and the polar because I have known being wild. I have spent parts of my life brave and joyful and surrounded by love. I just needed to take some time to relearn it, to be reminded that it is possible because I have known it before, and it can feel natural.

I am spending my days lately on the outside of the cage, I feel love here and the freedom of simply being wild. And much to my relief, no part of me wants to revisit the zoo.