Tulsa Zoo and Living Museum - Part the Third
When we last left our intrepid reporter, he had traveled the vast distances of Oklahoma, crossed the torrential storms of a rare hundred-year flood, scoured the city of Tulsa for a decent restaurant only to come up empty handed, and he had begun the tour of the Tulsa Zoo. Since his last report, limited internet connection and a drinking binge in tundra of the Yukon Territory has rendered the final report lost to all time. Until now. Translated from the ancient scrolls of Nebuchadnezzar, King of all Babylon, here is the final report from the Tulsa Zoo.
There are two areas of the Tulsa Zoo left to cover. These are pretty big areas too. First we come to the African Savanna. One of the main reasons I traveled to Tulsa was just to see one animal in this exhibit. The main of the Savanna consisted of 4 fairly spacious paddocks. One for Greater Kudu, one for Grant's Zebra and the eponymously similarly named gazelle as well as some birds like Marabou Storks, one for Cape Buffalo, and one for a lone Giraffe. Let's start with the Kudu. A very good exhibit, and what made it even better was that the signage actually said that this was not an African Savanna animal. Most zoos lump their Kudu in with the other “savanna” animals because they can, but it is incorrect. Kudus, both Lesser and Greater, are more found in the bushlands and woodlands rather than the typical open savannas. Kudos (or Kudus) to Tulsa here. I have only ever seen one other zoo acknowledge this. Next the the Kudus were the zebras and gazelles. Again a good exhibit and seemingly quite roomy. These are proper savanna animals. Next was the reason I drove two days in blinding rain. The Cape Buffalo. There they were in all their onery glory. Two of them, both females according to ISIS. Their area was much smaller than the other paddocks, but had plenty of mud wallows for them to lounge in. One aspect I really liked was a sign saying “we are not Water Buffalo.” Evidently they get that a lot. Next to the buffalo was the Giraffe. I think most of us know that Tulsa has had some bad luck with Giraffes lately. They had their 2 females die tragically from weird, freak occurrences. I know that very soon their Giraffe barn is getting a major overhaul so Giraffes dieing of hypothermia will not be an issue. Next to the Giraffe is a simulated Maasai village. This is very much in the same vein as the NALM. However, it was no where near as impressive as the former museum complex, and almost seemed like an afterthought.
Those areas make up the biggest bulk of the Savanna, but there are some other areas nearby and across the railroad tracks that also should get lumped in too. The main area here is a complex for Ostrich, Cheetah, Meerkat, and Günther's Dik-Dik (how I love an umlaut, and why doesn't umlaut have an umlaut in it?). Ostrich yard was a small yard behind a chain-link fence. Didn't see one though. Wouldn't it be better if the ostrich were moved in with any of the other savanna animals? Cheetah exhibit was nice and roomy, but I do hate having to look at them through chain-link fence. Again I didn't see any Cheetahs. As I rounded the corner of the Cheetah exhibit it led me to another viewing area for the Cheetahs. Still didn't see them, but at least it was elevated and not looking through the fence. Across from that viewing area were two small Dik-Diks. I have a soft place for these antelopes. My Facebook picture right now is me and the world's oldest Dik-Dik. Next to the Dik-Diks were the Meerkats. An interesting indoor/outdoor exhibit for them. I honestly don't think I've ever seen a bad Meerkat exhibit. Why is more thought put into Meerkat exhibits than say a deer?
Two more areas round out the Savanna. One is a fairly big area for White Rhinos. No rhinos today. Maybe because of all the mud, but probably because of all the construction going on next door in the playground. Actually I found this exhibit to be quite ugly. No real thought to the design of it. Lastly in the African Savanna was the Aldabra Tortoises. Sigh. Really? No, no, no, no, no. Aldabra is an atoll in the Indian Ocean and not in the plains of the Serengeti. I would be happier if these slow moving and misplaced giants were near a Madagascar exhibit.
Last big exhibit is the Elephant Encounters. I had high hopes for this supposedly 2.5 acre exhibit. Evidently though, their acres and everyone else's in the known universe are different. I have seen a 2.5 acre elephant yard in Dallas, this was maybe .75 acres at best. If you count the barn and the adjacent elephant museum you might get that total up to 1.5 acres. And just maybe, if you include all the visitor pathways and unused green space that number might approach 2.5 acres. There were two main yards for the elephants (Asians by the way). One was for a bull and the other was for 3-4 cows. The bull was out in his yard. Didn't look like a bull though as he had no tusks. Evidently he likes to keep them short. All of the cows were in the barn. I think this for their own choosing as the doors to the main yard were open. I did hear visitors complaining about this though.
Best part of the elephant complex was the Elephant Museum. I for a brief moment thought that maybe the PeTA people might have a good idea, but then I came back to my senses. I really loved this museum. It told the story of elephants in captivity and how they are handled. It told the story of elephant anatomy. Prehistoric elephants and elephant evolution are a big part of it. Even had a skeleton of a Sicilian Dwarf Mammoth. If they ever cloned this, you could keep it as a pet in you back yard it was so small. Also was the story of the elephant history at the Tulsa Zoo. Everything would have been great except none of the exhibits worked like they were supposed to. Many of them had “out of order” signs on them.
Last exibit was a statue of Ganesha, the Hindu god who takes the form of an elephant. Herein lies Tulsa's biggest problem. Note I did not say it was the Tulsa Zoo's biggest problem, but rather the city itself. Tulsa is the self-proclaimed buckle on America's Bible Belt. For those of you who don't know the Bible Belt, it is basically a reference to a string of ultra-religious, ultra-conservative beliefs that happens to run across America's south. Tulsa is home to Oral Roberts University, probably the most conservative fundamentalist Christian “universities” in the country (world?). [As a side note, one of my best friends was good friends with Oral Roberts son before he committed suicide, and I have heard plenty of horror stories coming from there.] So we have our setting here of the kind of place Tulsa is. The seemingly innocent statue of Ganesha was the subject of a huge controversy. Well of course Ganesha represents a pagan god and not the one true lord and savior. So what is a Tulsan to do? Advocate for a creationism display in the zoo. That's right, good ol' fundamentalist Christian creationism. It nearly happened too. There were measures done by the city council and the mayor to force the Tulsa Zoo to install these interpretation elements. Evolution is so evil, that in order to counter it, the one true god of Xenu, I mean Yahweh, must be uplifted in a zoo. It nearly went through too. Incidentally, the mayor who did this happens to be a relative (son, grandson?) of the man whose name is on the North American Living Museum, LaFountain I think. The NALM is probably the most heavily evolution-centered exhibits I've ever seen. In fact, I whole-hearted applaud the Tulsa Zoo for having more positive information on evolution and science-based learning than any zoo I have ever visited. This is what zoos need to be doing. While they are a for of entertainment, they are also a teaching place of science. Not only science, but history, culture, geography, geology, biology, ecology, environmentalism, conservation, and so much more. The measure never passed. Actually it did pass, but it was later rescinded and never implemented. The management at the zoo raised the fact that in order to tell the creation story they would have to tell several hundred different creation stories from all over the globe, many of those conflicting Christian viewpoints. It turns out that the folks causing the ruckus only wanted their form of Christianity heard and no one else's. Screw the Catholics, Lutherans, Orthodoxeians, Methodists, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, Scientologists, members of Heaven's Gate, Jedi, Pastafarians, etc., etc. All this from a simple statue of Ganesha at an elephant museum. On a side note, after all this happened, there was a lady who ran for mayor of Tulsa on the sole platform of getting a creationism display put up at the Tulsa Zoo and having Ganesha taken down. That was her whole campaign. Thankfully, she lost.
Only a few more areas left. Near the from entryway was a Discovery Center. I think it was mainly home to the education offices, but it tried to pass off as an exhibit with a saltwater reef tank and a few insects. Glowing neon signs does not make a exhibit. Just outside of here was a small nature trail through native plants and possibly wildlife. I did not go on the trail as it was not paved and I didn't want to sink up to my ankles in mud.
And that just about wraps it up for the Tulsa Zoo and Living Museum. I was pleasantly impressed. It isn't the best zoo I've ever visited, but it does have some impressive aspects to it. Hopefully very soon it will be getting a lot better. As I write this, Tulsa is undergoing a more to becoming a private zoo. They are following closely the model set up by Dallas last year. After seeing what went on in Dallas after the transition, things are only looking up for Tulsa. This is definitely a zoo I will be visiting again in the future.
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