Wild things are happening at the zoo

In 1889, William Randolph Hearst, the great newspaper tycoon, got into a debate with one of his reporters, Allen Kelly, about whether grizzlies still existed in California. Kelly spent nine months on assignment in the San Gabriel Mountains searching and, finally, luring an enormous grizzly into a pen that contained honey and mutton. They named the bear Monarch because the Hearst newspaper was the “Monarch of the Dailies.”

I am grateful that the Hearst Corp. no longer employs cub reporters to go out and capture grizzlies.

On Nov. 3, 1889, Monarch moved into Woodward Gardens, at the corner of Valencia and 15th streets in San Francisco. He enjoyed celebrity status as the “only California grizzly in captivity,” and it is his image that graces our state flag.

Monarch also inspired Herbert Fleishhacker to establish the San Francisco Zoo as a model of humanitarian care. In 1922, he purchased land near the ocean. He first established there the Fleishhacker Pool, the largest swimming pool in the United States (1,000 feet long by 150 feet wide). The zoo itself was built in the 1930s and 1940s as part of a Works Progress Administration project. The monkey island, elephant house and bear grottoes were among the first bar-less exhibits in the United States.

As an adoption gift, back in 2005, our neighbor Maureen gave us a year’s membership to the zoo, and truly, it is the most overused gift we ever received. It’s the only place in San Francisco with penguins, hippopotamuses, otters and kangaroos. It’s the only place in San Francisco with lions and tigers and bears. Oh, my.

The boys have ridden on the Dentzel carousel, built in 1921 out of hand-carved wood, almost every time, and I don’t get to leave the zoo until they get me on the Little Puffer Train, a Class-E steam locomotive built around 1904, making it one of the oldest forms of mass transportation in this city.

It’s the coolest of all zoos, showing reindeer at Christmas and tarantulas in the summer. My favorite exhibit ever was when they guided the visitors into an almost completely dark room so that we could experience how a lemur spends his nights.

My son Aidan likes the Mexican gray wolves best: Prince, David Bowie and Jerry Garcia. Part of an endangered species, the three moved in last year.

Zane’s totem is the bear; for Aidan, it is the wolf. If Aidan had his way, David Bowie would replace Monarch on the flag.

Other parents worry about whether astrobiology camp or nuclear physics camp positions their children best for Stanford, but not us. We take our sons one day at a time.

One of Aidan’s challenges is that he appears to have “an empathy deficit,” so we try to encourage compassion. We figured that Fisher-Paulsons were far too complicated to start out with, so we let him practice on peacocks and goats. Aidan goes to zoo camp and, thanks to my fairy godsister, the SPCA camp as well.

Unlike school, Aidan actually pays attention in camp, and so when I pick him up, he teaches me what a skink is, and what the most recently discovered mammal is (the olonguito). Or whether zebras are black with white stripes or white with black stripes.

This is Aidan’s fourth year of zoo camp, and there was a graduation of sorts. On Thursday, he spent the night. This has always been Aidan’s dream but not mine. Half a century ago, Brother X tried to throw me in the snake pit of the Bronx Zoo, and until we adopted the boys, I hadn’t even visited a farm.

This was also not my husband Brian’s dream either. He didn’t even like it in daylight. He always nominated me for the class trips, until they finally started serving wine. He tells me that the pink flamingos are a lot more tolerable when you have a rosé in hand.

The other Fisher-Paulsons spent the evening worrying whether Aidan would be too frightened by the growler monkeys and hyenas. But not my boy. He slept better than he did at home, possibly because he lacked the distraction of iPads.

Where are the wild things? There might not be grizzlies in the woods. Nor Mexican gray wolves. But there is a home for them, here in San Francisco. I asked Aidan whether he had spoken to David Bowie, and all he would comment was, “Dad, the one they call Prince? I think he’s really more of a Princess. I felt a little sorry for him. And Dad? I might have even made a human friend.”

And so in the place where the wild things are kept safe, I see the humanity of my son.

A year’s membership to the zoo is the most overused gift we ever received.