Preserve

Wild animals are kept on a preserve of sorts. The rules are lax in Zanesville, Ohio. The town has been worried about it for years. Before ending his life, the owner of the place, overwhelmed by the upkeep, heavily in debt, and personally distraught, opened the cages, destroyed the fence surrounding his property, and set the animals free.

Animals are put in a preserve where they’re kept. This is the act of one man’s will. He’s like a god who feeds and provides. Not well, but. Then God himself dies and others have to fix the mess, keep in check the forces unleashed, and take on the restoration of order and balance. It was, one official said, “like Noah’s ark wrecking right here in Zanesville, Ohio.”

Questions get raised about zoning and permits. I raise others for myself. For example: the animals are kept for someone’s pleasure; if they had a choice and could assert it, they wouldn’t be caged; but they don’t have a choice; they can’t even talk, which invalidates their right to a better fate— why? That sort of thing. Then they get out. Again, not their choice. And have to be shot. They’re ill-kept in captivity, and free, they’re dead. Where then could they be on this vast, wide earth?

Animals that shouldn’t be together—camels and wolves, lions and black bears, grizzlies and cheetahs—are kept in one place, and when they get out, they’re shot. There’s no logic to the group. No way to predict their behavior. No order of herd or pride or pack. No single instinct governs their movement; each would hunt, sleep, procreate in its own way—but can’t. Until now, the animals existed to be seen, to contribute atmosphere, to fulfill one man’s dream. The basics (hunt, run, etc.) were not on the list of reasons-for-being. Imagine paradise as a place where the simplest urges are fulfilled. As the chance to fulfill them. And being caught/torn/ eaten—even that end a form of rightness.

The animals get out and are shot by police. By the sides of highways, in woods, fields, and backyards. Fast, before nightfall, before someone gets hurt. Schools are closed. The town is locked down. Television stations warn everyone to stay in. It’s a cold, wet day in Zanesville, Ohio. Portable “Road Work Ahead” signs are reprogrammed to read “Caution: Exotic Animals” and set up along the interstate. The signs flash yellow in heavy rain. They don’t make sense unless you’re in on the story. Without the story, you might scan the trees for loose toucans or the ditches for pink flamingoes. You might not know you were in any danger. I talked with a girl whose father was there, but he was stuck in meetings all day. By the time his conference ended, the situation was pretty much over. He said a lot of people were sorry they missed it.

By the end, just a wolf and a monkey are left. Then just a monkey. Then, the reports correct, it seems the unaccounted-for monkey was eaten by a lion. Before the lion was shot. Before it was shot, it ate part of the monkey. That’s what got counted at first. Imagine in the moments before death, for the first time behaving most like yourself. Recalling instincts you once, very briefly, long ago, knew. Imagine becoming familiar again. Being unthinkingly you. I mean this to describe the final moments of both the lion and the monkey.

But of course, that’s what had to be shot: the entirely natural lion had to be stopped, did not belong there, could not live among people, as the owner might have hoped, when he governed a realm. When his will was all. Maybe he felt like a duke with his duchy, imagining his subjects content in their cages and that quietude reigned throughout the land as it did in the Peaceable Kingdom.

Yesterday, at three in the morning, my neighbor saw a fox carrying a squirrel jump her fence...