Moscow's Zoo

In the Moscow Zoo, there is a giraffe named Samson who writes a column for Novaya Gazeta. Well, that’s not exactly right, but that is how the rumor goes. The truth, which is slightly more banal, is that he was sponsored by the Russian newspaper for many years until funding inevitably ran out.

Watching him move his long legs languidly on a gloriously sunny day in June, I can see why Samson Leningradovich (named as such since he hails from St. Petersburg) was the obvious choice for adoption. He’s an uncannily friendly, charismatic giraffe who frequently bows through the gap in his pen to let visitors pet his spotted head, daintily baring his teeth to munch on the apples and carrots that people eagerly feed him. His chipper demeanor, however, belies a tragic, doomed love life.

“We kept trying to get a mate for him, but it never worked out,” Petya,* one of the zookeepers who showed me around, said, shaking his head sadly, “One of them broke her legs and had to be put down, and the other died of acute anaphylaxis after vaccination against anthrax.”

At 18, Samson is likely to end his days as a confirmed bachelor (the general lifespan of a giraffe is about 20 years, although they live longer in captivity). But as I watch him brashly chewing an apple while being stroked by a delighted, squealing toddler, I gather he’s adapted to his singlehood rather well.

Samson is just one of the many colorful creatures at the Moscow Zoo, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this September. Their impressive collection, the largest in Russia, consists of approximately 1,200 different animal breeds, scattered around 53 acres of land in the very center of this vast metropolis. The zoo is visited by over 3 million people every year, and employs over 600 workers, including some at their small affiliated zoo in the North (where Ded Moroz, the Russian Santa Claus, allegedly resides), as well as their breeding farm located approximately 100 kilometers outside of Moscow.

Perhaps because of its ample age, apocryphal tales about the zoo abound. One legend** tells of a mongoose (which is not a goose at all, but rather resembles the love-child of a fox and a groundhog) that was donated to the zoo by Anton Chekhov (who lived in a little red house across the street from the zoo’s main entrance), back when many of the animals there had previously been the exotic pets of eccentric aristocrats. Of equal interest is the now deceased brown bear who had allegedly been given to Boris Yeltsin as an unwanted gift. And yet another novelty is the so-called Parrot House – a little hotel for visiting researchers that is built in the style of an ornate, wooden parrot pavilion donated to the zoo by a noblewoman before the revolution and subsequently crumbled into dust.

As usual, however, truth is stranger than fiction. What’s truly impressive about the Moscow Zoo is that, through all of the apocalyptic events in Russia over the last century and a half, it has never been closed. Not once. It has seen revolutions – Lenin delivering a speech among the animals in 1915, and even shooting taking place within its walls. It has seen starving Moscow citizens volunteering to plant vegetables during World War II to keep the animals fed. It has seen bureaucratic upheaval – mayoral changes that cause funding to ebb and flow. And it has born the brunt of global political conflicts, like the current tension between the US and Russia, because of which, as one employee diplomatically put it, “certain countries have unfortunately chosen to decline our invitation to come to the big celebration in September.”

It has survived through all of these challenges because of its most impressive quality: the dedication and passion of its workers. Like Petya, a young man who fell in love with the zoo as a little boy and knew immediately that this was going to be his life’s work. Petya’s encyclopedic knowledge of animals is absolutely staggering. He knows precisely what area each animal is indigenous to and what type of climate they belong in. He knows that female Kazuara (a grouchy-looking, witch-like bird) need to be kept away from male Kazuara, because the girls have a tendency to beat up the boys. He knows the biggest pigeon in the world is a regal, blue-laced bird called the Victoria Crowned Pigeon. And he can tell androgynous male and female puffins apart without even sneaking a peek at their genitalia.

While Petya certainly impresses one with his vast store of zoological information, Alla, another zoo worker, astounds with her understanding of the animals on a personal, almost psychological level. Walking around the zoo with her was like being led by the mother of a multi-mammalian brood. She knew the names and personalities of each animal, and told anecdotes with a tender, maternal fondness.

“This is Leecha, she’s such a fashion guru,” she said, pointing to an orangutan who seemed to be eyeing up all the visitors and questioning their sartorial choices, “She loves clothing. When we brought her an old trench coat, she immediately grabbed it and started strutting around like a model.”

For all of the workers that I spoke to, however, there was one name that everyone pronounced with the same all-abiding reverence, that of their leader: President Vladimir Spitsin.

“When we refer to our ‘president,’ we don’t mean Putin, we mean President Spitsin,” Alla beamed, “He’s the captain of our merry ship.”

“When I first came to the zoo,” she recalled, “I was sitting in the hallway waiting to speak to the director, when this man came through the corridor, his shoes caked in mud, his sleeves rolled up, a shovel resting on his shoulder. I thought, ‘Who is this dirty man?’ And it turned out later that it was President Spitsin. The zoo was under reconstruction at the time, and he was out there digging with the other workers.”

The (quite literally) hands-on approach adopted by Spitsin is what the workers unanimously credited with the zoo’s ability to survive despite its long list of challenges. Spitsin began his career after mustering out of the army at 17, working at the St. Petersburg Zoo for 13 years, before becoming the General Director of the Moscow Zoo in 1974. That title was passed to Natalya Kolobova last year, and Spitsin has been promoted to the position of “president,” a title that was essentially created for him in gratitude for 40 years of service.

“What it means, in reality, is that I don’t do anything practical anymore,” he joked. “It’s the city’s way of easing me into retirement.”

Sitting in his stately office, with its built-in aquarium and numerous wood-carved sculptures of various birds and beasts, the silver-haired, ursine Spitsin cuts an imposing figure. Reserved, genteel, and wise, his passion and commitment to not only his cherished institution, but to the idea of zoos in general, is abundantly clear.

“What these ‘animal rights activists’ don’t understand is that zoos are very important in a society. There are various breeds, like the white crane or the puma for example, that would be extinct now without them. And by and large, animals live much more comfortably in zoos than out in the wild. Of course, there are bad zoos, but in a good zoo, animals have much longer life spans because they’re protected from predators and have immediate access to medical care,” he said, referencing a clearly heated topic.

To probe the sensitive issue of animal abuse further, I brought up the case of Gus, a beloved Central Park zoo polar bear who became somewhat of a comedic symbol of neurotic early 1990s New York when he was diagnosed with depression, and the city famously spent $25,000 to put him into therapy and treat him with Prozac.

“What would you do if you had a depressed polar bear?” I asked (a difficult question we should all ask ourselves).

“We don’t have any mentally-ill animals, because we care about their well-being,” Spitsin responded, “It’s important to care. It’s important to try to recreate their natural environment, it’s important not to keep them in the pen alone, it’s important to give them little challenges, to provide them with things to do. Animals are like humans, when they’re bored or lonely, they get depressed.”

It’s true that the Moscow Zoo seems to put an inordinate amount of effort into keeping its animals entertained. Every day, some of the keepers come in to play specially-designed games with the more intellectually-advanced animals, and many of the primate pens are equipped with hanging tires and kickboxing bags. I was particularly stunned when I made out the outline of a guitar in the black abyss of the owl display.

“Why is there a guitar there?” I asked Petya.

“We try to change up the display so that the animals don’t get bored,” he responded, leading me to wonder if these nocturnal creatures had secret musical abilities only Petya was privy to.

Still, one can only do so much to combat limited-funding, and in the case of the Moscow Zoo, it was difficult not to notice how many of the animals were in fact alone in relatively small pens that contained little to no greenery (the polar bear’s pen, in particular, had such a small reservoir that it made New York Gus’s enormous pool/cave complex look like a luxury penthouse), despite the workers’ best efforts to keep them happy. The zoo is currently under reconstruction, in preparation for the big celebration in September, so some of this was temporary housing, but the fact remains that there just aren’t enough resources or room for physical expansion to acquire a mate for every animal or to create large-scale ecosystems that would closely replicate their natural habitat, the two goals that Spitsin believes the zoo should concentrate on in its immediate future.

“We used to have a few red pandas here, but they died. We got them from abroad. It’s not so easy to adapt to living in Russia once you’ve been abroad,” Alla joked, smiling weakly.

More than money, the zoo’s greatest problem might be its own visitors. Even though there are signs hanging everywhere strictly instructing people not to feed the animals, almost everyone does, causing visible anguish to the workers who worry about the effect upon the animals’ health.

“People don’t understand,” Petya complained, genuinely upset, “They think ‘Oh, apples are healthy, so it will be healthy to feed them apples.’ But, for some of these animals, eating an apple is like eating a stone, it wreaks havoc on their digestive tracts.”

In this way, the kindness of the workers themselves might be an obstacle. Every employee that I met, including Spitsin himself, exuded a certain nineteenth-century gentility: they were all overwhelmingly eloquent, polite, mild-mannered, and gracious. When, at around noon, I told Alla that I was going to run out quickly to get lunch, she seemed shocked. “But I ran out earlier and bought you a few things already,” she said, pulling a couple of packaged chicken sandwiches and an enormous vanilla bundt cake from the office fridge. “You’ve forgotten about Russian hospitality,” she smiled, setting the table and putting the kettle on the stove to boil.

As incredibly pleasant as these Old World manners may be, they almost become an obstacle in dealing with the simple fact that Russians, as a whole, are not a particularly law-abiding people. As Alla and I stood by the polar bear pen, a man reached into a plastic bag, pulled out an apple, and hurled it over the glass enclosure. The bear, slumped down on the stony ground, began to apathetically gnaw at it.

“Sir, please don’t throw anything into the bear’s pen. It disturbs their digestive systems,” Alla said in her high-pitched, melodious voice.

The man ignored her and impudently put his hand into the plastic bag again, throwing another apple into the pen.

Alla tried a shaming technique this time, loudly complaining to me about how you’re not supposed to feed the animals because it can lead to their untimely death.

Ignoring her again, the man pulled out yet another apple and prepared to throw it once more. At this, she finally intervened.

“Sir, I’m sorry, but I’m an employee of the zoo, and I would hate to have you escorted out of here by a security guard,” she said sternly, clearly uncomfortable with having to resort to confrontational tactics.

Wayward apples and carrots, however, are not their only problems. Another situation arose when we were by the lion’s den, where the shaggy-maned cat was slumbering peacefully, hypnotically swatting flies away with his tail. Suddenly, a band of boys threw something into the pen; it crashed into a tangle of branches next to him, and the lion raised its head, visibly startled.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” Nastya squeaked angrily.

“We paid money to get in here,” one of the boys answered, laughing. “Why is he sleeping? He’s supposed to entertain us.”

“He’s not here to entertain you. This is his kingdom, and you’re just passing through it,” she replied, echoing a statement made earlier by Spitsin: “Animals are the masters of the zoo, and humans are merely their servants.”

Aside from these unpleasantnesses, the Moscow zoo is the typical, idyllic picture of a whimsical children’s wonderland, nestled in the shadow of Stalinist skyscrapers. Orangutans hang from tree limbs, using fallen branches to lazily sweep carrots on the ground toward themselves. Penguins stand perfectly still in their polar enclaves, heads cocked proudly to the sides like patient waiters. A sloth hangs upside down, curiously picking his nose. Couples sit by the café carts, nibbling on fresh corn-on-the-cob or sucking rooster-shaped lollipops, indulging in the thrill of feeling like a kid again. A polar bear’s fluffy backside and pigeon-toed paws stick out of a dark cave. A toddler, perched upon the shoulders of an exhausted parent, smacks him on the head, demanding to see the lion. A little girl presses up against the glass of the gorilla pen, eyes wide with newfound wonder.

Before I leave, I ask President Spitsin one last question:

“You’ve worked with animals your whole life, which one is your favorite?”

I expect the standard answer: bear, gorilla, elephant. Instead, he replies, in a sincerely grandfatherly way:

“Animals, they’re like children. You love most whichever one is in pain, whichever one needs your help most at that moment.” RL

NOTES

* At their request, several of the people interviewed for this article asked that we use pseudonyms, fearing reprisal for talking openly to an American reporter.

** Actually, legend may be too strong a word. The writer’s brother asserted this in his memoirs.