I was several hours into my stay as a Honolulu Zoo exhibit when I realized I had to shishi worse than Mari the elephant. Every animal deserves
a little privacyBut there were a bunch of kids standing in front of my habitat -- a large chain-link cage that until last week had housed a couple of disgruntled bears -- and these kids wanted to know what what I ate, why I wouldn't play on the tire swing and, most of all, where did I go to the bathroom.
If they didn't vamoose fast, they were about to find out.
They finally left and I snuck out of the cage and headed for the head.
A couple of zoo workers saw me and yelled "Code Red! Code Red!" -- the animal escape alarm. They were kidding, of course. Courtney Hawkins, the education program coordinator, had primed them to treat me like any other animal in the zoo. The "Code Red" did let everyone visiting the zoo know that I was visiting the "Little Animals Room." So much for privacy.
I checked into my cage Friday morning with my comfy chair, television, computer, electronic dart board and enough food to to keep all the animals in the Savannah exhibit happy for a week. The idea was to see the zoo from the animals' perspective, while helping the zoo celebrate its 50th anniversary and promote its overnight camping program.
Outside my enclosure, the zoo folks had been kind enough to erect a sign that said: "Homo sapiens giganticus" with a description of me that was just a little too close to home. ("Has human-like characteristics but is actually a journalist. Must be approached with extreme caution. Social benefit: Questionable.")
There was another sign that said, "PLEASE DO NOT: Annoy, Torment, Pester, Plague, Molest, Bully Rag ... Bother, Tease or Ruffle the Columnist."
AS soon as the zoo opened, hoards of kids began violating just about every "don't" on the board except, I think, "bully rag."
One of my first visitors was a woman and her daughter who arrived while I actually was on top of the cage fastening down a rain tarp. They read the signs carefully and scanned the empty cage. Finally the girl spied me on top and yelled, "There IT is, mommy!" I felt a little like Quasimodo.
Other kids came by and spent a lot of time asking questions. They initially would squeal at me to climb on the tree limbs that had been left behind by the bears. And I would say in my best Elephant Man voice, "I am not a bear, I'm a HUMAN BEING!" They were happy to learn that the bears had been moved to a better environment. The cement-floored cage I was in is happily a thing of the past.
They came to understand that we are all animals, it's just that some live in houses and some live in zoos. And by the end of the day, I began to believe that it should be vice-versa.
At 6 p.m., about 40 campers arrived to spend the night as part of the "Snooze at the Zoo" program. (Next available nights: Aug. 22 and 30).
I left my cage to become a camper and took the two-hour tour to see what animals do at night "behind the scenes," in their sleeping quarters. We learned all kinds of stuff about the different animal types. The best I can remember is that they break down into "nocturnal, diagonal and dirigible," but don't hold me to that. I didn't get a nap all day and after my shishi debacle I wasn't focusing real well.
The animals were less than thrilled to see us skulking around their private dens in the dark, and frankly, I could identify. One lion was particularly vexed and managed to "spray" one of our party.
That pretty much ended the night tour and I made a mental note to remember that ploy should I ever become a zoo exhibit again.