Our hearts could not bear Dublin Zoo being a virus victim
WHEN the news broke that Dublin Zoo was in trouble, I knew that everything would be alright. Rarely in life – and especially in this cruelest year – do news headlines play out like children’s stories, with happy endings guaranteed, but it was obvious that the public response to Dublin Zoo asking for help would be immediate, enormous and provide a fairytale conclusion.
Because Dublin Zoo doesn’t just bring out the child in all of us; it brings out the best as well.
Some people thought it was about the elephants or the red pandas, but honestly, it wasn’t. There are plenty of animal and wildlife charities out there struggling for funds – you only have to sift through the avalanche of post in your porch at the moment to see just how competitive the charity sector is and how desperate for donations most organisations, both two- and four-legged, currently are. So I don’t think that the huge outpouring of love and generosity for the zoo had anything to do with its 400 residents. Rather, I think it was an expression of mass nostalgia for what we were, and hope for what we can be again. Dublin Zoo’s dire financial straits isn’t just a Covid story; when the social history of this terrible time is written, it might just be the Covid story.
I am allowed to be doubly nostalgic because I worked in the zoo. I was 16 when I first cycled over there to don my white overalls and clear tables in the old café during my summer holidays; I would return most Saturdays and every summer until I started scratching a living with a pen.
And what a first job that was: imagine taking your breaks every day in the zoo, surrounded by animals whose pet names you knew from the keepers and whose quirky habits you quickly came to love. My favourite, for the record, was a distinguished-looking elderly gentleman called Sam, who had the misfortune to be an African hornbill – one of the ugliest birds you ever saw – in a zoo frequented by smart-alec Dubs who enjoyed nothing more than pointing out the aesthetic shortcomings of the inhabitants.
To make up for all the abuse Sam suffered, I’d often spend my breaks sitting with him and complimenting him, so that he came to know me and would gloomily mooch over to the front of his enclosure when I arrived.
I was there the day another waitress was injured by a polar bear – the zoo stopped showing the miserable animals shortly afterwards. I was there when a llama escaped and the keepers had to get it back to its enclosure without alarming the public, who enjoyed the spectacle so much they thought it was part of the entertainment. And I once saw the snakes being fed – the less said about that the better.
I’m nostalgic too for my later visits with my kids, when I would provide funny voices for the animals, and they would fall over running down paths and need to be brought to the first aid station (seriously, every time.) And even for the time I chaperoned the junior infants school tour there and managed to lose three of my four charges at the elephant enclosure. (After a few minutes of mad panic, I found them solemnly eating some other children’s lunches.)
LIKE most people, I think of Dublin Zoo and it makes me happy. I could highlight its amazing keepers, its breeding and conservation programmes and how it’s among the best zoos in the world, but I don’t think those worthy issues coloured anyone’s warm feelings towards the zoo over the past few days. I think we all just thought of past visits, either as children or as parents, and the sheer excitement of arriving at the huge lake and deciding which direction to take for our big adventure (counter- clockwise, obviously. Any other way lies madness.)
And along with those memories, I think we all share an optimism that some day soon things will return to normal and we will go back to the zoo – or at the very least, that we will have the reassurance that it will be there to go back to. Swamped by argument and debate over Levels 1 to 5 and endless splitting of distance and hairs, Dublin Zoo’s cry for help suddenly shone through all the grey and gave us an opportunity to turn a perilous story into a beacon of hope.
It may have started as an appeal about animal survival, but with such an emphatic response, the Dublin Zoo Covid crisis became a story about human survival and resilience. And the absolute determination to come through this time, to return to days out and to happy places. Hear us roar.
I HAD thought that ‘super spreader’ and ‘wet pubs’ were the least savoury expressions of 2020, but with the emergence of ‘twoway ban on sausages’, it’s clear this will be a tight race to the finish.