J. D. Porter

We humans have an uneasy attitude toward animals in zoos. It is an uneasiness that can be seen in the ongoing debate whether zoos are educational and useful or cruel and an outrage. This was pointed out to me in an article in my hometown newspaper over 50 years ago. The journalist who interviewed me as a young zookeeper at Busch Gardens said children adore zoos in a way no adult can. A child’s day at the zoo is an untroubled excursion of entertainment while grownups generally can’t delight in zoos as wholeheartedly. The break occurs the day we go to the zoo and see not just the animals, but also the bars that separate us.

The idea that zoos are intrinsically wrong has troubled me all of my adult life. But we humans haven’t always worried about the “ethics” of keeping animals in captivity. From the earliest days of exploration we have brought animals back from far off lands. Author Glynis Ridley documented an Indian rhino’s travels through Europe in the 1740s in her 2004 book, Clara’s Grand Tour. Then there was Zarafa the giraffe, who crossed the Mediterranean with his head protruding from a hole in the deck of a ship. He was “carefully walked” 550 miles from Marseille, France to Paris in the summer of 1827. Michael Allin shared that story in his 1999 book, Zarafa. But we don’t bring animals from far-off lands anymore and the the zoo business has changed dramatically in the last few decades. I wonder if it has changed enough to make it alright? As a writer, that’s a subject I couldn’t resist exploring in my novel, The Menagerie, A Zoo Story.

Our relationship with dogs is at the other end of the spectrum. While not everyone likes dogs, many people love them enough to let them sleep in the same bed. I always assumed that we had domesticated dogs to guard our campfires, villages and homes. But in writing my memoir, Lessons from the Zoo, I learned that might not be the whole story. Some research suggests that wolves may have domesticated themselves by hanging around human encampments about 15,000 years ago and adapting to our presence over generations. Today, dogs are much more than just companions. Their evolution has continued until we have not only guard dogs and hunting dogs, we also have herding dogs, therapy dogs, war dogs, and more. But humans have not always been kind to canines. It took some extraordinary effort by some extraordinary people to make animal welfare a focus of our communities. My 2^nd novel, The Dogcatcher and The Fox, examines the origins of the animal welfare movement in the early days of the 20th Century. The book is dedicated to my own dogs and the unconditional love they offered me: Mitsy & Tippy, who ran with me as a child, a dog named Joy, who eased me into retirement, and the dogs who shared my life in between – Simba & Jana and Chelsea & Bexley.

And then there are the animals that are neither behind bars nor inside our homes—but with whom we share a deep, historic connection. They have long labored along side us plowing our fields, pulling our wagons, and carrying us on their backs. Working animals didn’t enter my orbit until I reached retirement age and began driving a mule wagon at a quail hunting plantation. As a part-time wagon driver, I spent my days holding the reins and staring at the fine, muscular behinds of a pair of mules. Their radar-like ears were usually turned back toward me, listening for a “giddy up” or a “whoa mule.” They pulled me up hills and through mud holes. They went impossibly slow when heading out to hunt in the mornings but returned to the barn at the end of the day at a brisk trot—if not a dead-run. I had a direct relationship with them, although I’m not sure what that relationship was. There was a time when people relied on animal partners to carry us, pull us, and work for us until—as I write in my next novel The Muleskinner and The King—machines largely took their place in the early years of the 20^th century.

Each of these human-animal relationships—zoos, dogs, and mules—has evolved dramatically in the last hundred or so years. My three novels are an attempt to explore that evolution.