The zoo from hell starts with a huge queue of people, mostly families waiting to enter through an inadequate number of turnstiles. Inside screaming kids run wild, banging on glass and shouting at animals while inattentive parents stand chatting and showing no interest in the animals. Children push between your legs and stand on your feet as they try to get a better view so you decide to have a break in the café.
The café is packed, the food overpriced and poor quality. The staff are uninterested and rude. You pay over the odds for a cheese sandwich made from cheap white bread and packaged in a plastic container.
Aviaries contain domestic cockatiels and budgies; there are white tigers and a paddock of albino wallabies. Most of the enclosures are square lawns fenced with chain-link regardless of the species they hold. You stop to read an educational sign that keeps referring to species as breeds and herbivores as vegetarians. A gibbon is signed as a spider monkey and the Asian cat enclosures, formally displaying flat-headed cat and marbled cat, have been flattened and turned into a go-cart track with more screaming kids roaring around the track spewing out two-stroke petrol fumes as they go.
In the reptile house a corn snake is displayed with a plastic skull and tome stone with R.I.P on it.
A sea lion presentation feature a large male sea lions playing the roles of philandering sea captain in a comedy sketch that seems like something out of Benny Hill show. You come to the petting zoo / farm, you’d normally bypass this but you know they have spotted cuscus in there. Just as you’re about to enter you’re stopped by a member of staff who points out that for child protection reasons unaccompanied adults aren’t allowed into the children’s zoo. As you walk away you spot one child who has another in a headlock and is punching him repeatedly in the face as their parents stand chatting.
A teenage boy throws half of his cheese sandwich in to a sun bear enclosure, you point this out to a zoo keeper who promptly marches over and offers to take a photo of the kid feeding the other half to the bear.
In despair you leave, a person dressed as a lion wearing keeper’s uniform bids you farewell and invites you to ‘come back soon’ you do your best to give him a cheery smile but know there’s no chance you’ll ever be back.