Animal exhibitions

I'm heading out to the Strip to sympathize with the captive exhibition animals. I'm strapped to my car seat. The doors are locked. I'm inside my fenced, gated neighborhood. This dusty, crowded environment is bad for me. I'm imported from out of state. I'm on a schedule set by my employers. Traffic will keep me trapped in its cow-herd amble. I'm doing this work, somewhat civilized work for a creature evolved from a tadpole, for survival, because that's what my surroundings have taught me do. When I do get to the Strip, I'll be monitored, like everyone else, by security cameras—watched.

I'm just so glad, I think, as I wonder if I've paid the mortgage on time, that I'm not a kept animal, a captive creature. I have my freedom. I can, at any time, run off to live in the wilderness.

Dead dolphins started this line of thinking. Eleven of the 16 dolphins at Mirage's Dolphin Habitat died in the last 17 years, the Review-Journal reported a few weeks ago. There was little commotion. Locals had just been overcome by news that the Lied Animal Shelter had to kill more than a 1,000 homeless dogs and cats, so the news that the Mirage had entered into an agreement with the USDA to improve the dolphin habitat seemed small by comparison. The deaths—caused by a variety of factors, most natural causes—were merely unfortunate because, we can agree in a general, we're-all-guilty sense, no one, and especially not the dolphin's caretakers and business representatives, want anything bad to happen to them.

A few days later, there would be the typical crowd of tourists visiting the blue-painted pools behind the Mirage to watch the bottle-nosed mammals, native to the Atlantic Ocean, slide through the water and pop out and flip for a trainer's handful of fish. It would instantly satisfy our cultural hunger to meet Flipper, to get close to the ocean's most fawned-over pets, animals with slick skin and the misfortune to have a skull curvature that makes them appear to be smiling under any circumstance.

Shortly after the news about the mortality rate among Mirage dolphins, a jaguar at the Denver Zoo attacked and killed a zookeeper, and was shot, and the Associated Press wondered aloud if it was time to rethink keeping wild animals in captivity: "What's to be gained by having an animal like that in the zoo?" a Colorado biology professor said to the AP.

"At least this is something outside in a nice environment," says a man in line with his children, waiting to get into the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat.

It's a sunny February day. I can see determined vacationers in swimsuits at the adjacent people pool. I try to get closer to them, but it's for hotel guests only, so I look through the gate for a while, a voyeur taking in the feel of vacation—sunbathing, drink-sipping, nothing-doing.

After paying $15 and heading into the dolphins' area, we listen to an introductory speech by a staffer: "We are an education-based facility. Now what that means is that actually we do not have scheduled shows with the dolphins. What we do have are what we call 'training sessions.' Those training sessions do take place all day long, however they are completely random and unscheduled. ... Feel free to have a seat on the pool wall, but we do ask for your help in keeping your hands, your legs, your feet and anything that you may need to set down on the outside, or the people side, of the wall. ... If you do happen to see anything inside the pool that looks like it should not be there, please notify a staff member immediately so hopefully we can get to it before the dolphins do ..."

At that, we're set free to wander inside the enclosed exhibit. Swimming has never looked so good. Two dolphins glide in the clean pool, turning smoothly this way and that; graceful and sleek and smooth. One squeals; another swims upside down. Signs posted here and there do educate me: "Dolphins have a very large brain in comparison to their body size," says one.

I ask two employees about the dead dolphins. One is tight-lipped, but notes that it's not unnatural for dolphins to die. Another says it was just sad.

Later I talk to Mirage spokesman Gordon Absher, who says the Mirage took proactive measures to ensure the habitat is in great shape. He also says that in addition to being intended to attract people to the resort, animal exhibits are meant to educate. "The message is conservation. ... There's no better place than Vegas if you're trying to touch people. It's great to have a facility in Seattle or Monterey Bay, but if your mission is to educate people, to touch people, there's no better place than Vegas. ... There's a study that shows people who have seen dolphins up close feel a much stronger connection than a person that has never experienced that. [A conservation] message is going to resonate with them," says Absher, who previously worked at Mandalay Bay representing the Shark Reef.

PETA's Lisa Wathne calls this "the zoo industry's great conservation con. If you look at tigers and elephants, they've been in captivity for hundreds of years, and both are facing extinction in the wild. No conservation message has gotten across."

I head toward the Secret Garden, where the big cats, and llama-looking creatures called alpacas, live. On the way in, there's a life-size figure of Siegfried and Roy, and Roy appears to be wearing leather pants, standing with a white tiger.

We all know how that story ends. Or do we?

Roy Horn, in a scarf and warm workout clothes, was walking, ever-so-slowly, down a Downtown street toward an underpass one chilly morning in December. A few thousand runners in Santa Claus suits, participating in the Great Santa Run, swarmed around him; a TV cameraman or two walked backward in front of him; Siegfried walked at his side. Way to go, Roy, people cheered, inspired by his fight to recover from being maimed, nearly killed, by his show tiger Montecore on stage at the Mirage in 2003. Post-attack, Roy defended the tiger.

Like his recovery, this 1-mile walk was no quick affair; it felt easily like more than an hour as Roy struggled to make the turn and come back several blocks to a finish line where a tape was held up especially for him. The crowd, most sporting a stripping-Santa look now that the day was warming—running shorts with red coats and fake beards, or red pants with tank tops and red Santa hats—cheered crazily; he had done it, he had walked a long stretch, proving that misty-eyed thing about the human spirit, but somehow also further bonding us with his life's very public lesson: You can still love wild captive animals even if they try to kill you; and, if you, systematically, culturally, end up killing them. It's their nature. And ours.

We want to know what is wild. The brave (and crazy?) submerge themselves into the wilderness and try to know the beasts on their home turf; remember the Grizzly Man who spent years falling in love with bears in the woods before they ate him? Remember Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, recall a whole literary genre of man purposefully taking off into the wilderness as a psychological metaphor. We go for escape, to regroup, to test our mettle against challenges unlike those in urban or suburban life, to know nature and its beasts, really know them.

Of course, in our 21st-century compact thrill-a-minute quests, it's a little easier to drag animals into our world and name-check our experiences with wildlife from the people-side of the wall. And if there's a place to name-check any sort of wild experiences, it's Vegas.

Back inside the Secret Garden, beyond a topiary lion with a few missing patches of leaf fur and a tree that has a sign saying, "legend has it that if you make a wish on this beautiful tree, your wish will come true," is a made-to-be-natural pen full of alpacas. They're long-haired and mellow, and I count six in a space a bit larger than Vegas backyards, and I think I see a turkey of some sort in there, too. The alpacas, transplants from South America, chew cud and look at us look at them. Overhead, piped-in music delivers an African drumbeat. Next up are the white lions with big manes. They are huge and, although healthy-looking, heartbreaking in confinement. Granted, these animals rotate through the Garden back to a larger roaming space, an employee says. And the Mirage is meeting federal standards of animal welfare; this is not a neglectful or unusual environment—it falls within the laws we've made to house and exhibit wild animals. It's the way we've chosen to keep wild animals captive.

Around the small bend, three white tigers with cute pink noses lie on tree trunks. A sign says "tigers can be found in varied environments, including snowy forests of Siberia, tropical rainforests of Indonesia and dry grasslands of India and China." Or Las Vegas Boulevard. PETA's Wathne will note later that white tigers are not an endangered species but "genetic freaks" because they are inbred. "You've got to stop breeding them and give them the best life possible at a sanctuary with hundreds of acres to roam, " she says. PETA has requested that these animals be freed into a larger sanctuary.

Nearby, the African jaguar is pacing back and forth, back and forth, a neurotic behavior animal biologists say is common among captive animals. The white tiger is pacing, too. I notice that I'm pacing, too. The Mirage's Absher says, "Folks who don't know anything about our operations think [animals] have no place in a casino environment," but, he says, they're not in casinos, they're in special habitats. He rounds back to the Mirage's mixed mission of taking good care of the animals, attracting tourists for business and educating people along the way. I understand, and ultimately benefit from, our entertainment industry's mission, and yet, I pace. And I wonder what sort of wishes have been made here at the wishing tree.

On the way through Mandalay Bay's hallways toward the Shark Reef, there's an elephant statue, then a Strip Steak ad, then a bunch of conventioneers wearing lanyards for the 79th Annual Western Veterinary Conference. They're studying "Behavioral Problems in Captive Reptiles" and "Modifying Avian Behavior" and "Basic Medical Management of Exotic Carnivores." One vet says he doesn't know whether the Reef exhibit is a good home for its animals and doesn't plan to visit it. Another, a local, says, "Oh yes, Mandalay Bay does a good job. And I bring my family there."

The marketing for the Shark Reef works on the cultural fear-factor of Jaws and the like: "Kill an hour or two," jokes the ad. Here, we're seeking a thrill. The exhibit covers 105,000 square feet, has 1.6 million gallons of salt water and holds more than 2,000 animals, from jellyfish to lizards to 15 kinds of sharks. And about a million tourists per year paying $15.95 to get in. And despite an unfortunate occurrence in 2004, when a great hammerhead shark, the only one then in captivity in the U.S., suddenly and unexpectedly died here, the Reef is respected and accredited by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association.

With audio wands in hand, pretty much like the ones used in the Guggenheim or Bellagio art galleries, we make our way down into the dim tunnels to look through aquarium glass. In one of the first glass cages is a crocodile, smallish by my expectations, yellower, and the little placard next to him says these type of crocs "viciously guard their nests from predators." He is simply flopped there looking back at us, no vicious guarding going on. But perhaps, like many Las Vegans, he doesn't consider this home.

Onward. Fish. Lots of colorful fish, a surreal array of breathtakingly elegant sea life. And the world's second-largest lizard species. I am moved by the life in the aquarium in an artistic sense; it is gorgeous and inspired.

I watch sharks for a while as they wiggle quickly from one corner of the 22-foot deep aquarium to another. The ocean, even as represented by this tank, is mysterious, and slowly gives me perspective about our little lives on the pavement. But soon I'm distracted by a human mother trying to arrange her four squirmy children in front of some piranhas for a photo. "Look at me and smile! Look at me!" she's sniping. Truth is, they're not looking at her or the fish; they're looking at the other tourists, too.

In glass bin No. 13, we all luck into the most fascinating of water creatures, the human in a blue scuba suit. Three divers with nets are trying to catch something, who knows what, as there are many little fish all over them, but they cannot seem to get the one they want. It draws the largest crowd.

Up ahead and out of the deep, another creature catches my eye: A middle-aged woman in leather pants, leaning over to pet a stingray. She's working those pants—no doubt her Vegas pants, no doubt this is not something she does every day, wear zip-around black leather pants that stretch around some healthy hips, wear them to a shark reef with a petting zoo. An exhibit usher, or "naturalist," cautions all of the human tourists to be gentle with the animals in the petting pool. I think of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin and his death-by-stingray and how that, simply by cultural steam, may have translated into ticket sales here. Later I'll ask a PETA's Wathne about petting captive sea animals and she'll tell me, "That's the latest rage. ... Obviously, that's stressful for the animal involved. It causes higher mortality rates for fish, sea stars ..."

I do not pet the stingray; somehow I imagine it a kindred spirit and I would not be happy to have a hundred tourists touching my back without my consent. I head out to the trinket shop, and also pass on buying a stuffed whale or a Shark Reef milk-chocolate bar. Leaving Mandalay Bay, I pass a wall-sized ad for the Mandalay Bay Appetizer Platter that shows almost exclusively sushi. I love sushi.

The Flamingo's penguins are gone. This saddens me, as I have fond memories of indulging in the absurdity of visiting penguins in Vegas. I have little memory of feeling guilty about it or taking any measures to send them home to some snowy environment. They were here for years outside the Flamingo—the casino that started it all—this whole collection of imported, exotic, watchable creatures. Chinese-speaking tourists are snapping photos of the spindly-legged, pale namesakes, who are actually from Chile, and who are gathered, eight of them, on a small island in a pond surrounded by the hotel towers.

A sign by the abandoned, white-painted rock where the penguins once lived says, "Our penguins have moved to their new home at the Dallas Zoo." Later, I ask the Flamingo's PR Manager Jamie Nielsen why the penguins got shipped out. Nielsen sends this message, forgetting the why aspect—I was hoping for some noble action on behalf of the penguins: "The Flamingo Las Vegas relocated 10 penguins from the hotel's Wildlife Habitat to the Dallas Zoo in April 2006. The Dallas Zoo was excited to house penguins for the first time, and welcomed the birds with a new penguin exhibit, which opened in the fall of 2006. No plans have been confirmed for the former penguin habitat at the Flamingo. However, a menagerie of exotic animals, including Chilean flamingos, still call the 15-acre outdoor Flamingo Wildlife Habitat home ..."

True, there's plenty of other imported wildlife at the Flamingo. A pack of amateur photographers crowds around something, feasting on it—an excited man with a chipped tooth tells me, "It's a pheasant! They took it from China." Indeed it is, a golden pheasant, standing quite still on the grass by the sidewalk, surrounded. I read that it uses its long tail feathers to attract females. And, apparently, predators. It's pretty, and in quite a predicament, but again I'm watching the tourists more than the animal. "Is it mad?" a tall, red-haired woman asks. Another woman, pudge squished into a tight pink sweater, moves quickly down the sidewalk, video camera in hand, capturing action footage of a walking duck. Then a sitting duck. A lovey couple sneaks off to view the black swan behind the flamingos. A sign says, "Please do not throw coins in the water." A penguin at the Denver zoo got very ill from eating coins. Inside the hotel, not 50 yards away from the fauna and slot machines, are several arcade games, the largest of which is a crane game. For a buck, you can capture a stuffed leopard. Back outside, an African-American woman takes pictures of statues of pinker, bigger, healthier-looking fake flamingos, one of which perpetually spits water into a fountain. An elderly white woman walks by talking on her tiger-print cell phone. I weave my way out of this wildlife habitat into the larger one. At the valet, herds of angry, honking cars are corralled inward. At the apartments behind the Flamingo, on Koval, ripped screens and sheeted second-story windows are kept behind rails that look like black iron zoo bars. Fences everywhere. Further down the road, overhead, on a strip-club billboard, there's a woman on her knees crawling like a cat. Is she trapped in that life? Am I? Are we all? I recall a recent KNPR State of Nevada discussion of native Las Vegans vs. transplants, in which a caller said she is trapped in Vegas, that even if you leave, you come back. As I leave the Strip, I'm again literally strapped into my car, locked in, stuck in traffic. I could barely be more captive. I will go home to my fenced, gated neighborhood, and get up in the routine of tomorrow, still thinking about the dead dolphins, the dead zookeeper, the maimed entertainer, the shot jaguar. And the beauty of wild.

If there are threads of observation here, in considering animal exhibits on the Strip, they are the triple-rich irony of people watching animals in captivity to understand the wild while being in a certain state of captivity themselves and ever-watched by layers upon layers of others; and the battle for the meaning of education and welfare in this context.

Most of us are neither animal-rights zealots nor overtly cruel. We are fascinated by animals—it gives us a sense of the power and freedom of life, gives us escape from our civilized existence. Looking at a tiger up close and personal, we cannot help but be amazed not only at its beauty and strength, but also at its unchecked instincts and impulses. To see the delicate dance of the nearly invisible jellyfish is to be moved by its poetry, its enviable oneness with its water environment. Thus, an educational point of animal exhibits does get across—the dolphin has a big brain; the crocodile guards its home; wildlife is an exquisite natural gift. At the same time, though, it makes people consider that wild animals might indeed be better off out of captivity, which would suggest, if the education mission works, someday zoos would be the very cause of the end of zoos. But today, there are lines to get into these exhibits.

In the end, few of us are terribly comfortable with the idea of captivity; it's counter to one of our most cherished ideals, freedom. The more we anthropomorphize the animal, the more we assign it the rights and values we have.

Roy Horn is a metaphor for the intersection of civilized humans and captive wild animals, not just a story within it. Siegfried and Roy loved, and became rich and famous for showing, and made the Strip famous for showing, captive, trained, wild animals. When he was nearly killed by Montecore, we were a species torn apart: Did we side with the trapped animal or the animal-obsessed man? As he struggled to walk up the street three years later, still professing his love of the wild animals, he represented the ongoing, treacherous conclusion: both.