Amelia Thomas - The Zoo on the road to Nablus

“Zoo animals have frequently found themselves at the center of human conflicts. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the inhabitants of Paris’s Jardin Zoologique were ordered slaughtered and handed over to butcher’s shops. World War II saw Rosa the hippopotamus bombed to death in her pool at Berlin, along with seven Indian elephants. Berlin’s aquarium was hit dead-center. Gasping fish mingled with shards of glass and cascaded in torrents down grand, empty staircases. In Wroclaw, German soldiers shot the lions, bears and elephants. The rest, including a rare Amazon manatee and three chimpanzees trained to take tea, died of cold and starvation. In 1812, the czar’s magnificent animal collection was slain when Napoleon’s troops surrounded Moscow. In modern Sarajevo, the last animal at the zoo, a brown bear, finally starved after surviving for seven months on the bodies of its companions.

Iraq, once home to the world’s first zoological garden at Ur, watched an international public, inured to bombs ripping through mosques and markets, lament a rare Bengal tiger shot dead by a drunken American soldier.”

From The Zoo on the road to Nablus A story of survival from the West Bank

Diplomatic gifts, political paws, prisoners of war, collateral damage. If many deem zoological gardens unnatural creations, they should look at what happens to animals in the midst of human war. That’s unnatural.

“The Zoo on the road to Nablus” is a heart wrenching book that tells the story of a very shabby zoo, on the Palestinian town of Qalqilya, and of its vet/ man with a vision, Dr Sami Khader, intent on turning the garden into something up to date with international standards instead of a dusty collection of cement floored, iron barred and bare cages featuring a few baboons, three lions, a giraffe, a couple of wolves, a crocodile, some ruminants and birds.

The underlying question is “why bother”? When gun-fire scares animals to death (in one case literally), funds are non-existents and requests for help lie buried under paperwork because the town mayor has been incarcerated for months (even though no charges have been formally made). Why care about a lot of scrawny animals that will go hungry next time a curfew is declared for weeks on end?

Maybe because Fufu the ibex, an orphan raised by Dr Khader always seems happy to see him each morning or because Ruti the giraffe likes to search in all his pockets for the small piece of candy he brings each day. Maybe because the good doctor really sees the Qalqilya Zoo transformed into a respected institution in a decade. But then what? What of the rockets, tanks and tear gas?

Amelia Thomas’s book is a melancholic little gem. She recounts the events taking place at the zoo month by month from November 2005 to March 2007. Steering well clear of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict per se, she intersperses her tale with interesting stories on zoo history and animal science and centers her lens on Dr Sami and the construction (or attempted construction) of a new carnivore wing and a natural history museum on the premises.

The only thing I wasn’t 100% sure about was the author’s choice of tone: she recounts many meetings and events with a wealth of descriptive detail that made me quite sure she had witnessed them, yet she never made herself visible or a participant in conversations where surely she would have an opinion and be urged to participate. Only in the postscript did it become clear that Thomas wasn’t present in any of these situations. With that in mind I don’t know if she made the best choice of authorial voice.

“The Zoo on the road to Nablus” is a bittersweet book that I think many people would enjoy. It has almost a zen feel to it: there is so much suffering, but what comes across is a proud voice that says “we too have a right” out of the mouth of an indomitable individual. It definitely puts our daily lives in perspective. Just one complaint – no photographs.

Here is a link here you can see photos from the visiting photographer Astrid mentioned in the book.
And a news article where you can see a picture of the orphan baboon Rambo and his kitty.

Marina Belozerskaya - The Medici Giraffe

“The Medici Giraffe” is a remarkable book that spans from about 250 years before Christ up until the last century. From ancient Egypt to the Aztec court of Montezuma, from the court of Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor to the opulent Florence of Lorenzo de Medici and from the menagerie of Josephine Bonaparte to the vast hills of Hearst Castle in California the author never falters.

Marina Belozerskaya’s book is subtitled “and other tales of exotic animals and power”, so expect no fuzzy tales of roman emperors and the love they lavished on favorite pets. While this was also a reality, this book focuses on the many ways exotic animals served as currency to those powerful enough to obtain them. “Exotic” is the keyword here – it was because particular animals were rare and strange that they were used as a way to gain leverage, impress neighboring rivals, give a little push to whatever diplomatic conundrum was going on at the time. Vast menageries with hundreds of animals from hundreds of different locales (such as the one Spanish conquistadores found in Montezuma’s court) were a way to state that their owner was a man respected and feared in all those faraway provinces. Montezuma even kept humans in his zoo – albinos, who were considered precious additions. The Spanish took this as a further proof of the Aztecs godless ways, and proceeded to slaughter them in a cruel and vicious fashion, more to the liking of Christ’s soldiers, apparently forgetting all the dwarves, hunchbacks and hairy men kept in European courts for the entertainment of their monarchs.

For Ptolemy Philadelphos, king of Egypt, elephants were a way of terrifying his opponents. Although neighboring kings had been able to procure some tens of elephants all the way from India, Ptolemy wanted his army to have hundreds. He sent expeditions into the wild and unknown regions of what is today Sudan, and ended up putting into place a vast network of trading posts along the Nile to keep the steady flow of animals into Alexandria, a city he was also shaping into the most beautiful and grandiose in the known world (the famous library dates from his reign).

For the roman leader Pompey, exotic animals were also a way to make his might obvious to all. However, in true roman fashion, the circus was their final destination. For animal lovers this chapter makes for very uncomfortable reading. That roman leaders would routinely organize spectacles ending in the slaughter of a lion or bear is not news, but the numbers butchered under Pompey’s organized circus in 55 BC are staggering: for five days, twice a day, lions and leopards chewed their way through monkeys, antelopes, sheep and gladiators alike. For the grand finale a herd of wild elephants was brought out to match their wits against a group of elephant hunters from Sudan. Cornered, the animals still standing after the initial massacre are said to have let out such awful cries of despair that even the jaded roman audience pleaded for them to be spared. Pompey did not heed their requests. In time Julius Caesar’s henchmen would not heed his.

Lorenzo de Medici was no warm and cuddly boy himself. In roman tradition he tried to organize his own circus in Florence, but the lions kept as a symbol of the city were so well fed they ended up dozing amid the petrified sheep brought for their enticement. But this setback was not enough to render Lorenzo insensitive to the diplomatic power of exotic animals. He wanted, after all, to be seen as a king, instead of a republican merchant leader. A giraffe had a neck almost as high as the importance he thought he should get.

Now, Rudolph II was probably mad as a hatter. I mean, it’s all very well to emulate family tradition, but when that tradition involves allowing lions to roam your palace and maul subjects at their will as your father once did, it’s probably best to review your priorities. If obsessive collecting has a shade of mental illness to it, you can also check that square: Rudolph became so obsessed with collecting every zoological specimen he could get his hands on (alive or stuffed) he even forgot he had a kingdom to run and ended up deposed.

My favorite chapter was “The Black Swans at Malmaison” regarding Josephine Bonaparte’s menagerie. It’s not only that she was kinder to her exotics than any male counterpart on the book: she also had a head on those pretty shoulders. At a time when cabinets de curiosités and menageries were all the rage among the wealthy and crowned, she stepped into a male hobby without skipping a heartbeat and with a lot more discernment. Josephine wanted the animals at Malmaison to roam free and as such gave away to Natural History Museum all the offers she got of large carnivores, keeping instead flocks of herbivores, birds and large cages of parrots. Also, the story of the French naval explorer Nicolas Baudin is absolutely riveting: he had the responsibility of amassing Australian specimens for Josephine’s menagerie and although he died in the middle of his return voyage and his reputation was soiled by a lying rival, his expedition brought many new exotic specimens to France, among them kangaroos, emus and the famous black swans.

The last chapter tells the story of the complex character of William Randolph Hearst. Although there is little doubt the mogul truly cared for the well being of animals (he was vocal against vivisection and passionate about dogs), his ranch at St Simeon seems, in the long run, to align with the flaunting of power so common in men of wealth and more than a little with the craziness associated with hardcore collecting. Hearst, after all, nearly finished off his own fortune amassing works of art – and exotic animals were another hobby. True to his gender he couldn’t stay away from the large cats, but the primates probably suffered the most in their cramped, bare cages.

“The Medici Giraffe” is a book of rare width and breadth – each chapter brings alive the time to which it pertains drawing from many historical sources. Belozerskaya doesn’t just stick to the story at hand but instead brings in all sorts of characters and historical episodes that further illuminate the particular tale. The chapter on Montezuma’s menagerie made something I had never even heard of come alive with detail, and Josephine’s chapter I felt really adds detail to her life. It enchants and tingles the little grey cells – a must for anyone interested in history and animals.

Michael Allin - Zarafa

I was going to review "Zarafa – the true story of a giraffe’s journey from the plains of Africa to the heart of post-Napoleonic France” along with “The Medici Giraffe” which I just started. But having started it yesterday and finished it today I came to believe this little book deserves a review of its very own.

“Zarafa” is elegant in its sparseness (only 200 pages with a nice, big, font), there is nothing extra, nothing tacked on or that feels out of place. From first to last page Michael Allin’s book flows effortlessly, gently bobbing the reader along this fascinating tale.

A pawn in diplomatic relations (as exotic animals tend to be), Zarafa was captured as a baby in Sudan (by cruelly slaying the mother, by the way) and grew up in the presence of men, for whom it was made clear this was a precious cargo they should guard with their lives. The exceptionally friendly Zarafa soon turned into what can only be called a pet (dimensions aside) so easy and trusting was she around humans. She was to be a present from Muhammed Ali, Ottoman viceroy of Egypt, to the French king Charles X – a gesture intended to dissuade the French from helping out the Greeks, involved in a civil war against the Ottoman Empire.

Luckier than previous giraffes who set hoof in Europe (Caesar supposedly had hundreds killed or pitted against predators in his circus, while in Constantinople another died of hunger), and than its mate, a sickly giraffe that would soon die in London, Zarafa grew into a vigorous, healthy animal, only slightly short for her species at 3.6m (12,12ft), which as Allin suggests might have aided her travels.

The trip down the Nile, either walking or by boat, is the part of the journey,Allin had more difficulty in reconstructing historically for lack of written testimonies. However, from Alexandria onwards he found a wealth of documentation that must be many a historian’s dream: documents with carefully outlined budgets, schedules and itineraries regarding the giraffe, letters from the many fans the gentle Zarafa made along the way and newspaper articles documenting her passage and witnessing the enormous curiosity and affection the giraffe brought about in the French people.

Aboard a boat altered with a round hole padded with straw on deck (the giraffe’s head was protected from intense sun or rain by an awning), Zarafa and the Arab and Sudanese handlers that would accompany her to Paris made their way to Marseilles. Her travelling companions were the cows, that not only provided the many litres of milk the animal consumed daily but also served as guides in her exploratory walks.

In fact, watching how docile the animal was and how happily she followed the quadrupeds, the natural historian Ètienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire came to the conclusion that walking her all the way to Paris was definitely feasible. For the first leg of the journey he wrote frequently to the mayor of Marseilles, who had built a special stable for Zarafa’s stay in his own property – a friendship brought on by the mutual tenderness both men felt for the animal.

About halfway to Paris, Saint-Hilaire grew sullen with what he felt was indifference on the part of the royal house with the physical effort of the walk. He had wished to board the giraffe on a boat for the last part of the journey, but received no authorization to do so. At 55 years-old the walk was taking its toll on Saint-Hilaire too. In addition to the daily travel he had to entertain the local bourgeoisie every single day and parade Zarafa for their curious eyes.

The king seems to have felt only a modicum of the wonder and fondness Zarafa had elicited in almost everyone else. She came to be housed in the Jardin des Plants and Atir, the Sudanese, became her private carer, even sleeping in her quarters. The French continued to lavish attention on her by visiting daily until her death.

“Zarafa” is a great book where extensive research doesn’t weigh on the reader. Allin transformed what must have been years of work into a sweetheart of a book.