Ican't believe they fell for it but the folks at the Honolulu Zoo have actually agreed to let me spend two days at the zoo staging a "Columnist Gigantist Homo Sapiens" exhibit. Creature comforts
at the zooBetter yet, it will fall on the one night a month when the zoo allows people to come pitch tents and spend the night. That means I'll have plenty of human-type company. The zoo at night is much different than the zoo in the day. For one thing, most of the animals are AWAKE, not passed out in the shade trying to make it through another cruel sunny Hawaii afternoon.
So, mark July 25 on your calender and come take part in Honolulu Lite Night at the Zoo. I'll be in a cage but other overnighters will hunker down on one of the nice, large lawns in the middle of the zoo.
The main question you may have is, why? Why would someone want to spend a few days in a cage at the zoo? It goes back to a wire story that ran last year about a Homo Sapiens exhibit at the Copenhagen zoo. A guy and a girl stayed in an apartment-like enclosure between some baboons and a pair of ruffed lemurs to put "the similarity between animals and humans into context." That sounded like a bunch of claptrap to me. I knew they were staying there because it was fun.
Being an avowed Homo sapiens myself, I figured I could do the same thing here: set up a human exhibit at the zoo. So I approached the zoo people and after several months of serious thought they finally said, "Up to you, bubbaloo."
MY stay will tie in nicely with the Honolulu Zoo's 50th Anniversary, which is underway now. As part of the anniversary, the zoo has a number of things going on, including the once-a-month camp-outs, full-moon tours and other activities.
I met the zoo marketing manager, Mary Lou Hata Foley, and assistant director, Tommy Higashino, for a walk-through this week to find a suitable habitat for a semi-domesticated columnist.
I was so excited I got there early and hung out in front of the zoo, where I spied a woman attempting to smuggle monkeys out in a double baby stroller. Mary Lou showed up before I could stop the woman, which was good, since the little guys turned out not to be monkeys but, you know, just extremely ugly babies. So we were lucky there.
The Honolulu Zoo has come a long way since I was in high school. Animals today live in "habitats" that represent the way they'd live in the wild. In the old days, they lived in "cages" that represented, well, cages.
The animals seem happy as can be, except for the giraffes, who are constantly bullied around their enclosure by a male ostrich the size of a small truck.
We looked at an empty hyena pen in the Savannah Exhibit as my possible habitat. It was OK and I kind of liked the contextual juxtaposition of a humor columnist living in a pen developed for what were once known as "Laughing Hyenas." Now, we know hyenas are the most fierce predators in the wild and only laugh after they've ripped the face off a fleeing gazelle.
Then we looked at the bear exhibit, which actually still is a cage. It seemed roomy and cool and the cage might keep out the rats that Tommy said run around the zoo at night. He assured me the cage would be relatively bear-free on my sleepover. The bears were passed out on their backs snoring, which is what I plan to do in the same cage for two days. In fact, the only thing they were missing was a TV remote control. I decided it would be the perfect location for the Honolulu Lite Expeditionary Force and Zoological Headquarters. We all shook on it, except the bears.
So, if you are interested in taking part in Honolulu Lite Night, call the zoo at 971-7195. It should be wild. And remember, you can feed the columnist.