Sailing with Noah: Stories from the World of Zoos

Epilogue

Epilogue Sitting on this beautiful beach, looking out over the Caribbean, it is hard to imagine that there is anything amiss with our world. The water is five completely different hues of blue, stretching in wide bands from the deep azure of the horizon, to the striking teal waters just off-shore, then finally blending into the pure white of the waves washing up on the beach. In a while, I’ll put on my mask and fins and dive the shallow reef not far from here. I won’t see anything I haven’t seen on any other of our annual pilgrimages to this place, but it will be magical all the same. This is supposed to be a vacation, and I feel a little guilty for working when I should be relaxing. But my wife, ever understanding, just shrugs. “Some people read books on vacation,” she says, “some people write them. Whatever floats your boat.” She, of course, knows the working title of this book and I figure she’s teasing me a little, but I keep writing all the same. We’re here because ten years ago my wonderful friend, Alvin Katzman (who would probably refer to himself as “the Jew in Chapter 18”), introduced us to this little bit of paradise—another small favor that I will never be able to repay. It’s a good place to finish a book, though, especially since it’s just twenty degrees in St. Louis. There’s a moral in there somewhere. Perhaps it’s just that everything is relative. The world is in bad shape, but it could be much worse. Many dedicated people are devoting their lives to making it better. In many places we are winning. Sometimes the victories are small ones, but they are victories nonetheless. 294 I recently returned from a trip to London to work on the ISIS project with our European partners. While there, I met with Paul Pierce-Kelly, one of the original founders of the Partula snail project, at the Zoological Society of London. He was, as always, bubbling with enthusiasm, showing me the computer program he developed to track Partula genetics. He designed it partly to help with a problem that ISIS has—tracking the genetics of a population when we don’t actually know which animal bred with which. It is a tricky problem, but Paul’s solution was ingenious, and it will no doubt be incorporated into the final version of the ISIS software. Paul brought me up to speed on the world’s smallest reserve, the one for the partula snails on Moorea. He has worked with a field scientist to fix the technical problems of keeping the carnivorous snails out and is now planning a whole series of microreserves. Before I leave, he gives me an old faded brown envelope covered with Ulie Seal’s distinctive scrawls. It is the envelope on which Ulie sketched out the Partula snail Species Survival Plan. Paul asks me to take the envelope back to America for Ron Goellner to sign. Ron’s is the last signature Paul needs. After Ron signs, everyone who was present when Ulie established the first SSP for an invertebrate will have autographed a very historic, albeit plain, piece of scrap paper. Many things have not changed since I began writing this book. The very sick elephants of my early days at the Indianapolis Zoo continue to thrive, and their appetites have never flagged since the day Debbie and my wife began tossing them soggy bread balls. Pete Hoskins continues to run the Philadelphia Zoo, and the gorillas of Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo continue to inhabit Tropic World. The young boy who fell into the gorilla exhibit still occasionally visits, but not with his mother and older brother and sister. The episode was terribly traumatic for them; his grandparents bring him instead. Rob Shumaker and his orangutans have left the National Zoo, though. There is a new facility in Ames, Iowa, that has been designed to house primates that are involved in experiments on learning. Oddly, the consultant who worked for years on this project and, when it neared completion, was charged with hiring the primate center’s first director, was James Abruzzo, the same man who brought me to St. Louis. There have been defeats and setbacks, though. Amali, the first baby African elephant conceived via artificial insemination, died on June 3, 2003. She had a severely impacted bowel and underwent...