As a group we decided that the Albuquerque Bio Park would
be a suitable place to complete our field observation assignment. The ABQ Bio
Park is located in the Barelas neighborhood on 10th and Atlantic
where a baseball field and a community center and tennis courts are all in
sight from the entrance of the zoo. Upon entering the zoo there were gift shops
and cafés welcoming it’s patrons and to my surprise there were quite a bit of
people for a cold, windy and overcast day.
To be completely honest the zoo
wasn’t what I remembered it to be. As a child I had remembered the zoo to be
vibrant and full of life but this time around it was very gloomy, maybe it was
representative of the weather. The animals themselves seemed miserable. Most of
them were asleep and some seemed uninterested when people walked by. Although,
the mountain lion was the most active, pacing back and forth and was glaring
into the crowd with his hazel eyes and his sharp teeth. This was intriguing to
me because I could only help but think that this magnificent animal probably
felt discontentment with being locked up in a small cage.
Overall most of my experience at
the zoo came from this critical and pessimistic perspective. Although, some of
those feelings of anger faded while walking through the crowds and seeing how
excited the small children were as they were running from exhibit to exhibit.
They seemed so happy pressing their small noses and hands against the glass of
the polar bear habitat, and being able to see animals in real life than rather
in picture books. I also felt a little warm and fuzzy inside when seeing the
mother elephant and her baby eating peanuts.
It made me realize that although these man made structures and habitats
made me upset by confining these animals in such small spaces they also brought
a sense of “wilderness” to an urban setting like Albuquerque.
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