On modern zoo animals

I've seen the statistics, read the stories, but in my own peculiar parallel universe, it really hasn't sunk in, even though I've interacted with such people time and again.  It was the tourists that did it.  I've seen tourists in droves, I've been one myself, but you expect them on cruise ships and at airports and in tourist towns, but you really don't expect to see them at the sale barn.  For you city slickers, a 'sale barn' is the regional facility wherein livestock (pigs, cattle, horses, sheep, goats, and the occasional llama) are bought and sold.  I grew up in a farming family and eventually made it my career; 4-H and FFA were my preferred extracurricular activities (both youth agricultural organizations).  Though I found it a little strange that the state zoo now hosts an actual milking parlor and keeps a small herd of dairy cattle, I merely smiled at the incongruous thought and went about my business.  Then years later, I'm up to my eyeballs in paperwork and wondering how long the sale is going to last when a couple approaches, asking after the daily schedule.  They had come merely to watch something that they've never before seen or encountered or even really considered.  Cattle sales are certainly interesting events, and a favorite gathering place for the locals, but I had never before considered one a spectator sport.

But it seems everyone is far more familiar with 'lions and tigers and bears,' than they are with domestic livestock.  Thanks to nature shows and zoos and such, these wild beauties are far more familiar than the ever so prosaic cow.  The majority of modern westerners live in urban areas, many with such animal parks, but very few have first hand experience with cattle or swine.  The tiger and panda are almost mundane, but the cow has become mysterious, exotic, and fascinating.  It was a perspective I had never truly considered.  Recently, there have been a series of stories in the news about folks trampled, gored, and mauled by animals at various national parks in an attempt to 'get close to nature' or get a picture with the animal.  I hardly understood how it could happen, but now it makes sense.  The dancing, singing, talking animals of the cinema are what people, personally unexposed to animals save perhaps the family dog or the lion at the zoo, unconsciously consider to be normal.  Of course the cute, shaggy bison wouldn't hurt anyone, why it looks just like grandma's pug!  They don't understand that the domestic cow is dangerous, let alone that its wild cousin is even more deadly to the unwary.

This summer I was at a national park and there were two signs posted in the restrooms alone, saying that bison are dangerous, keep your distance, now I understand why when I thought it was overkill and should be common sense!  It is certainly a strange world where wildlife is more familiar than our domestic species, farm animals are now an exotic attraction at the local zoo, and the average Joe thinks he innately has the skill of the 'dog whisperer' with even the most feral of animals because that's all he's seen on TV and at the movies since he was a kid.  'Old Yeller' and 'The Yearling,' are not what we think of any longer when it comes to classic animal movies, and this move away from realism, while cute and heartwarming, does have its consequences when it is our only conception of what animals are and aren't.  Maybe sales barn tourism has a future after all?