Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
San Diego Zoo after sundown
Sounds of the animals moving around, wind in the trees.
The electric sodium lights hiss in the zoo’s parking lot. A winged beetle flops, buzzes feebly on the cement apron next to where I park the car. The 11 p.m. air is vaguely scented with eucalyptus and animal piss. Behind the ticket booths, on the other side of the rolled-down steel gate, the door to a nearby gift shop stands open. A vacuum cleaner cord flips in and out of the shop’s doorway. There’s music and chatter from someone’s radio, tuned to KFMB. Security guard Fred Avila roars onto the plaza in his truck, the flamingos send up a manic quacking.
Few people inhabit the zoo grounds at night. Buildings and grounds workers clean the bathrooms, offices, and walkways, leaving at 2:30 a.m. An attendant keeps watch over the Children’s Zoo nursery; an intern does dirty work at the hospital. Radio/telephones link them to one another and to the handful of security guards on patrol. Fred Avila remarks that sometimes hours will pass with no human contact. There’s just the sounds of the animals moving around in the darkness, wind in the trees.
Zoo illustration
A few months ago, Fred was making his rounds when he noticed something white in the bushes near the concession cart they call Stand No, 4. His heart jumped when he realized the white was not a goat’s flank but someone’s shirt. He flipped on the truck’s spotlights, a young man elbowed out of the foliage and ran up the road. Fred got on the radio and yelled, “Stand No. 4, now!” He turned on the megaphone and yelled at the man to stop. The man was terrified. He turned back, jumped in the VIP Cushman cart parked nearby, and headed up towards Hoof and Horn Mesa. Fred yelled, “Stop, asshole!” The man responded, “Don’t you cuss at me!” Fred kept talking, persuaded him to stop. The man claimed to have been left in the zoo by his mother. Fred took him to the security office. The police came. They told Fred the man had “a mental age of ten.” The man’s brother was contacted. They released him without charges.
The zoo security office is an outpost of light on the edge of acres of musky blackness. Inside, Carol Johnson monitors a video camera trained on the door of the zoo’s vault. A monkey keeper named Mike strolls in, bleary-eyed and bored. On maternity watch for a Celebes macaque, he’s looking for a snack and a little human company. He’s the only animal keeper on duty; veterinarians are on call in case of emergency. He tells me about the Cretan goats who jump out of their enclosures at night and walk along the tops of the walls of other enclosures, as if taunting the other animals. One of the goats gave birth in the Przewalski horse exhibit the other night: a daring employee dashed across the enclosure and grabbed the baby, which the parent goat had abandoned. It’s in the Children’s Zoo nursery now. Mike wanders off into the dark.
Fred drives along the plaza towards Wegeforth Bowl, shining a directional spotlight along the perimeter fence to our left, looking for movement. Transients will cut holes in the fence or lay cardboard over the barbed wire on top and climb over, looking for something to eat. Tanked and punchy sailors will be caught wandering around, thrill-seeking. Thieves have come for animals: several birds of prey were taken last year; another time, a man was caught leaving with a burlap bag containing two Cappucine monkeys.
Fred steers the truck down a narrow road behind the Bowl. The dark, shiny leaves of exotic plants scrape the vehicle’s sides. Sometimes Fred gets spooked coming down behind the Bowl. It’s backed by a hillside covered with thick vegetation. There are dark niches and twisting paths between the show animal cages. It would be easy for someone to jump out and grab Fred’s gun from the holster on his hip.
Descending from the truck, Fred shines his flashlight on the padlock of a cage, then beyond it into the soft round eyes of a clouded leopard. His stubby body tenses as Fred plays the light over the dark rosettes on his pelt.
“These guys are really tame. He’s not scared of you, see.” The clouded leopard creeps forward on clownish large paws to peer trembling into my face. He makes huffling noises against my hand. His breath is warm in the chilly night. “He’s got big teeth, though,” Fred mentions casually. “Probably take your hand off if he wanted to.”
Further down the road, Anna, famous canine friend of a cheetah named Arusha, methodically barks until Fred offers her a dog biscuit. The cheetah lies with her racer’s forelegs stretched regally before her. She turns her face away from the commotion. Water slops over the edge of a high tank behind us, where a sea lion swims in furious circles. Makona, a grey wolf, prances coquettishly across the front of her cage when Fred approaches, then stretches her long body up the front bars for stroking.
The truck backs up the road, and we drive a circle of the zoo. It seems intrusive: the truck’s loud engine startles sleeping birds and grazing hoofstock. A road near the fence along Interstate 163 leads us to the Birds of Prey cages, where an African Milky eagle-owl swivels his head around and blinks. The bushes behind the cages are quiet. The fence is secure. The padlocks are intact.
The elephants, giraffes, and other megavertebrates are locked away in their barns. The truck’s headlights catch pinpoints of silvery iridescence on antelope eyes, dik-dik eyes, oryx eyes; set like stars in the pitch-black fields of the enclosures around us. Cape buffalo stare us down with annoyed expressions. The zebras stand us a sideways challenge, then toss manes and heels and run to the opposite end of their yard. A takin, moose-like and shaggy, sits on his rump on a rock, stick-thin arms hanging down. He follows the movement of the truck with his head. A miniature water buffalo cranes over his fence when Fred smacks his lips and calls to him.
Up at the zoo hospital, James, a young intern, tells me his main night duty is feeding necropsied animal parts into an incinerator. The incinerator, a pinkish-beige color in the dark, is yards long with a heavy door on top. Tall cylinders stand behind it. Behind the hospital is the pathology barn, where the air is close, warm, sweet: formaldehyde and decaying flesh. Just inside is a garbage bag of animal parts — “a few dead baby parrots,” James says. Specimen jars line one wall: “liver and heart, sand gazelle” reads one label. In a big freezer are jammed bloody plastic bags: translucent yellowish placental eggs from an African dwarf crocodile, a curving, three-foot-long pair of Bongo horns. There’s a two-ton hoist next to a chipped white metal roller table, capable of handling small elephants. “But when Jean the elephant died,” James says, “we had to do her outside, she was so big.” It took James two days, eight hours a day, to cut Jean up into easily disposable chunks. “The incinerator’s very new, very high-tech,” James says, “but it can only handle so much flesh at a time.”
Outside the pathology barn are the rows of quarantine cages, lurid in the strong fluorescent lights. The only occupants currently are a male and a female African lion, who hunker up to the front of their cage as Fred unlocks the outer gate to the cage area. He tells me they’re “friendly.” The male lion doesn’t look so sure. The female lion throws her flank against the bars and tilts her chin at us. Her side is warm and slightly damp. The short hair is coarse but silken, like the coat of a horse that’s just been curried.
It is time to go. James creaks open the pathology barn’s metal door. A white metal plaque has been mounted on it; the lettering is difficult to read in the dark. It is the Necropsy Prayer:
- O, Lord, give this pathologist
- The vision and wisdom
- To maximize the message
- That our charges give
- That they shall not have died
- In vain for their extinction is also
- Mine.
Here's something you might be interested in.
San Diego Zoo after sundown
Sounds of the animals moving around, wind in the trees.
San Diego Zoo after sundown
Sounds of the animals moving around, wind in the trees.
The electric sodium lights hiss in the zoo’s parking lot. A winged beetle flops, buzzes feebly on the cement apron next to where I park the car. The 11 p.m. air is vaguely scented with eucalyptus and animal piss. Behind the ticket booths, on the other side of the rolled-down steel gate, the door to a nearby gift shop stands open. A vacuum cleaner cord flips in and out of the shop’s doorway. There’s music and chatter from someone’s radio, tuned to KFMB. Security guard Fred Avila roars onto the plaza in his truck, the flamingos send up a manic quacking.
Few people inhabit the zoo grounds at night. Buildings and grounds workers clean the bathrooms, offices, and walkways, leaving at 2:30 a.m. An attendant keeps watch over the Children’s Zoo nursery; an intern does dirty work at the hospital. Radio/telephones link them to one another and to the handful of security guards on patrol. Fred Avila remarks that sometimes hours will pass with no human contact. There’s just the sounds of the animals moving around in the darkness, wind in the trees.
Zoo illustration
A few months ago, Fred was making his rounds when he noticed something white in the bushes near the concession cart they call Stand No, 4. His heart jumped when he realized the white was not a goat’s flank but someone’s shirt. He flipped on the truck’s spotlights, a young man elbowed out of the foliage and ran up the road. Fred got on the radio and yelled, “Stand No. 4, now!” He turned on the megaphone and yelled at the man to stop. The man was terrified. He turned back, jumped in the VIP Cushman cart parked nearby, and headed up towards Hoof and Horn Mesa. Fred yelled, “Stop, asshole!” The man responded, “Don’t you cuss at me!” Fred kept talking, persuaded him to stop. The man claimed to have been left in the zoo by his mother. Fred took him to the security office. The police came. They told Fred the man had “a mental age of ten.” The man’s brother was contacted. They released him without charges.
The zoo security office is an outpost of light on the edge of acres of musky blackness. Inside, Carol Johnson monitors a video camera trained on the door of the zoo’s vault. A monkey keeper named Mike strolls in, bleary-eyed and bored. On maternity watch for a Celebes macaque, he’s looking for a snack and a little human company. He’s the only animal keeper on duty; veterinarians are on call in case of emergency. He tells me about the Cretan goats who jump out of their enclosures at night and walk along the tops of the walls of other enclosures, as if taunting the other animals. One of the goats gave birth in the Przewalski horse exhibit the other night: a daring employee dashed across the enclosure and grabbed the baby, which the parent goat had abandoned. It’s in the Children’s Zoo nursery now. Mike wanders off into the dark.
Fred drives along the plaza towards Wegeforth Bowl, shining a directional spotlight along the perimeter fence to our left, looking for movement. Transients will cut holes in the fence or lay cardboard over the barbed wire on top and climb over, looking for something to eat. Tanked and punchy sailors will be caught wandering around, thrill-seeking. Thieves have come for animals: several birds of prey were taken last year; another time, a man was caught leaving with a burlap bag containing two Cappucine monkeys.
Fred steers the truck down a narrow road behind the Bowl. The dark, shiny leaves of exotic plants scrape the vehicle’s sides. Sometimes Fred gets spooked coming down behind the Bowl. It’s backed by a hillside covered with thick vegetation. There are dark niches and twisting paths between the show animal cages. It would be easy for someone to jump out and grab Fred’s gun from the holster on his hip.
Descending from the truck, Fred shines his flashlight on the padlock of a cage, then beyond it into the soft round eyes of a clouded leopard. His stubby body tenses as Fred plays the light over the dark rosettes on his pelt.
“These guys are really tame. He’s not scared of you, see.” The clouded leopard creeps forward on clownish large paws to peer trembling into my face. He makes huffling noises against my hand. His breath is warm in the chilly night. “He’s got big teeth, though,” Fred mentions casually. “Probably take your hand off if he wanted to.”
Further down the road, Anna, famous canine friend of a cheetah named Arusha, methodically barks until Fred offers her a dog biscuit. The cheetah lies with her racer’s forelegs stretched regally before her. She turns her face away from the commotion. Water slops over the edge of a high tank behind us, where a sea lion swims in furious circles. Makona, a grey wolf, prances coquettishly across the front of her cage when Fred approaches, then stretches her long body up the front bars for stroking.
The truck backs up the road, and we drive a circle of the zoo. It seems intrusive: the truck’s loud engine startles sleeping birds and grazing hoofstock. A road near the fence along Interstate 163 leads us to the Birds of Prey cages, where an African Milky eagle-owl swivels his head around and blinks. The bushes behind the cages are quiet. The fence is secure. The padlocks are intact.
The elephants, giraffes, and other megavertebrates are locked away in their barns. The truck’s headlights catch pinpoints of silvery iridescence on antelope eyes, dik-dik eyes, oryx eyes; set like stars in the pitch-black fields of the enclosures around us. Cape buffalo stare us down with annoyed expressions. The zebras stand us a sideways challenge, then toss manes and heels and run to the opposite end of their yard. A takin, moose-like and shaggy, sits on his rump on a rock, stick-thin arms hanging down. He follows the movement of the truck with his head. A miniature water buffalo cranes over his fence when Fred smacks his lips and calls to him.
Up at the zoo hospital, James, a young intern, tells me his main night duty is feeding necropsied animal parts into an incinerator. The incinerator, a pinkish-beige color in the dark, is yards long with a heavy door on top. Tall cylinders stand behind it. Behind the hospital is the pathology barn, where the air is close, warm, sweet: formaldehyde and decaying flesh. Just inside is a garbage bag of animal parts — “a few dead baby parrots,” James says. Specimen jars line one wall: “liver and heart, sand gazelle” reads one label. In a big freezer are jammed bloody plastic bags: translucent yellowish placental eggs from an African dwarf crocodile, a curving, three-foot-long pair of Bongo horns. There’s a two-ton hoist next to a chipped white metal roller table, capable of handling small elephants. “But when Jean the elephant died,” James says, “we had to do her outside, she was so big.” It took James two days, eight hours a day, to cut Jean up into easily disposable chunks. “The incinerator’s very new, very high-tech,” James says, “but it can only handle so much flesh at a time.”
Outside the pathology barn are the rows of quarantine cages, lurid in the strong fluorescent lights. The only occupants currently are a male and a female African lion, who hunker up to the front of their cage as Fred unlocks the outer gate to the cage area. He tells me they’re “friendly.” The male lion doesn’t look so sure. The female lion throws her flank against the bars and tilts her chin at us. Her side is warm and slightly damp. The short hair is coarse but silken, like the coat of a horse that’s just been curried.
It is time to go. James creaks open the pathology barn’s metal door. A white metal plaque has been mounted on it; the lettering is difficult to read in the dark. It is the Necropsy Prayer:
- O, Lord, give this pathologist
- The vision and wisdom
- To maximize the message
- That our charges give
- That they shall not have died
- In vain for their extinction is also
- Mine.