@Andrew Swales this is a wooden cutout where folks, usually children, can insert their faces into holes, where the wolves faces would be, for the purpose of taking a souvenir picture. The cut-out has been here, near the Wolf enclosure for about 13 years. This was my first visit to the Zoo in about a year and my first during the pandemic. The Zoo is doing a good job of adhering to the guidelines and encouraging its visitors to as well. The petting yard is closed. The coffee shop is closed. Folks are asked to wear masks while visiting and most everyone I saw that day was. Here you see that the cutout has been covered and wrapped to prevent its use. The sight of it there so, brought to mind a few thoughts. First, that the zoo’s wolf pack, six siblings removed from a den during a population control in rural Alaska, where a community was concerned with the deprivation of the local caribou herds by an abundant wolf population, had arrived the summer this display was put up. Removing the cubs from the wild was a non-lethal control method, that additionally served an educational purpose, by bringing the charismatic and popular animals to the zoo for urban Alaskans and visitors from outside the state to experience. Now at the end of their lifespans, I noted that there was only one wolf in the enclosure, along with a sign letting the public know that the wolf was at the end of her natural life and was being monitored by zoo staff to ensure comfort and quality of life. I remember it being big news a couple years ago when the zoo’s alpha had been put down following a terminal illness. I did not ask, but wondered if something had happened to the other four. The shrouding of this display...touched me...I’ve lived in Anchorage for 15 years. Several years longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere else...this year has a sense of finality too it. Another thought concerned the practical effect the shrouding of the display had, preventing visitors from inadvertently transmitting the virus to each other. And lastly, I considered the philosophical, the psychological, and maybe even the the political, effects as to why it would not have made more sense to simply load up the display and remove it to storage for the duration. Why “celebrate” our ruin in this blighted age? Why this monument to fear or folly or prudence? Was it intentional or just another symptom of the unreasoned neglect that seems lately to burden us with the memory of a better and more hopeful time. I turned 50 this year. It was the thing during my visit that I felt compelled to photograph. And @amur leopard is right...it looks shabby. I’ve not looked, but I’m almost certain I’ve posted pictures from other visits of excited children (maybe my own nieces and nephews) smiling out from the visage of the wolves...thrilled to see the eyes and hear the winter howls of Anchorage’s pack (and not the only in truth, but the most accessible) just a few feet away. And now perhaps, there is only one. And she has grown old. And waits in memory.
@Pleistohorse
this is a wooden cutout where folks, usually children, can insert their faces into holes, where the wolves faces would be, for the purpose of taking a souvenir picture.
Thanks! - very obvious when you explain!
A clear, 'invited (and multiple) contact point' - maybe one for the 'zoo museum' if our new world becomes the norm.
In the UK, these are usually in the form of fat ladies in Victorian bathing costumes with buckets and spades, at the seaside!
As our legacy to future generations, I think everything must be remembered, even if it is not celebrated.
Nothing should be air-crushed from history.
