Fuente: Nelson Hernandez
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The Central Park Zoo's senior zookeeper, Juan Romero, feeds April the sea lion and directs her during the sea lion show.
This column doesn't break a lot of hard news, but I've got some to report: Come next week, Scooter and April, the venerable sea lions at the Central Park Zoo, will be joined by two youngsters—Katie and Edith. I gathered this information, or rather stumbled across it, on a visit to the zoo Tuesday morning.
The zoo hasn't been my frequent stomping grounds since I was, like, 5 years old and the pressures of academe called. But I reported there on a day more suitable to seals than people (yes, I know, seals and sea lions are very different species and the denizens of the Central Park Zoo, indeed all the city's zoos, are the latter) on the chance that the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the Central Park, Prospect Park, Queens and Bronx zoos and the New York Aquarium, would let me feed the gals.
I knew it was a long shot and, indeed, they politely informed me it was out of the question. Sea lions are a lot like people, or at least dogs, and they probably wouldn't take a mackerel from me, no matter how famished, if they didn't recognize me, or at least my scent. On top of that, there would have been the not insignificant task of getting down the hand signals so they'd perform headstands or dive on cue from the top of their faux cave into the frigid waters below.
Nonetheless, I've often admired the show from afar as I've walked past the zoo at feeding time and the obvious rapport between zookeepers and animals. I figured that even if I weren't allowed to feed them—come to think of it, who wants to show up to their next meeting smelling of tilapia—it would be nice to learn more about these aquatic mammals.
I've been going to the Central Park Zoo my entire life. We've even got 16mm home movies of me visiting my best friend at the zoo—Artie the Camel—in the late '50s. I know it's not the politically correct thing to say, and in the best of all worlds zoos probably wouldn't even exist, but I kinda preferred the zoo of my youth to the more humane and educational institution that replaced it in 1988, if only because they managed to pack in a lot more animals.
There were elephants, lions, tigers, cheetahs, giraffe, hippos, monkeys, bison, gorillas and of course polar bears. There were giant outdoor fin de siècle cages filled with exotic birds. (I'm not recalling all of this off the top of my head; they sell a pictorial history of the zoo in their gift shop, near the animal-themed shot glasses.) You could visit and in the course of an hour feel as if you'd touched base with the entire animal kingdom.
Back in those days, before our collective consciousness was raised, we didn't spend much time worrying about the animals' mental health, though even a little kid could tell they seemed pretty sluggish, the gorillas in particular. Nonetheless, even if they were depressed or sedated, there was a compelling element of danger, knowing you could lose a hand if you stuck it between the bars of their cage. You don't quite get that same feeling of peril from the penguins behind glass in the contemporary Polar Zone.
The sea lions seemed to occupy a special place—both in the geographic center of the zoo and in the urban imagination—because they were perhaps the only species at the old zoo that seemed to enjoy a space that met their requirements, that offered some semblance of freedom as they vanished beneath the water at one end of the pool and popped up at the other.
Scooter
At 25, and with cataracts, Scooter, the current senior sea lion, is almost old enough to remember the old days. Her roommate April is a half-decade younger. There are no male sea lions at the Central Park Zoo, whereas there are in Queens and at the aquarium. I was told that's because males can grow to 700 pounds (Scooter is a relatively petite 200)—and what tourist would want to be at the receiving end of one of those cannonballs? The other reason is that males tend to be more vocal than females and Bruiser, the last fellow to share the space with the ladies, apparently annoyed the swells who live on Fifth Avenue overlooking the park with his pronouncements. "They make a lot of noise," confided Mary Dixon, a spokeswoman for the Wildlife Conservation Society. "There were complaints."
It started to rain as Juan Romero, a senior wild-animal keeper, originally from Venezuela, arrived with buckets of fish hanging from his hips like six-shooters. One container held herring, the other capelin. Jeff Sailer, the WCS director of city zoos, described capelin as "a large anchovy. We get it from the same source as the cruise ships do. It's human quality."
Apparently, the sea lion show isn't solely for the delight of visitors. It's also used by the keepers to examine the sea lions at close range to make sure they're healthy; at least that's their story. Not that the animals don't seem thoroughly to enjoy performing. One might go so far as to call them exhibitionists, especially April. They rolled over, barked on command (quietly, of course, so as not to affect real estate values), slapped Mr. Romero high fives and performed flipper stands. April executed a perfect swan dive. Their attention seemed to wander only at the end of the show (when the fish were also pretty well depleted), when April declined to jump over a stick.
"What happened was the other one was chasing her," Mr. Romero explained when he rejoined us, referring to Scooter—though whether they had a falling out, or were just having fun, the handler didn't say.
He added that he's eager for the arrival of the new sea lions next week, acknowledging that they'll help raise his game: "I'm looking forward to doing four sea lions by myself. Katie is already trained. Edith is like a brand new car. We have to learn how to drive it."
— ralph.gardner@wsj.comFuente: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
