(Oops) In a Lonely Place

So, I'm pretty sure I got confused on the posting order of these questions, regardless, realized I missed a blog post unintentionally and last week's post maybe should have been about an awesome encounter with the non-human world instead. SO HERE IT IS NOW!

In high school for three years I worked at our local zoo as a camp counselor during the summer. Essentially, I was an unpaid babysitter for about 20 kids from 8-4 each day. But because of that, I got to other stuff outside of my counselor duties with the animals. I got to help feed tigers, create enrichment toys for the elephants, hold snakes, feed snakes (unpleasant), clean up after animals (also unpleasant) in general act as an assistant zookeeper whenever one of the zookeepers needed some extra help/didn't feel like cleaning up elephant poo. It was amazing. I learned a lot about animals, a lot about conservation/preservation, a lot about poo and added many reasons to my list of "Why I don't want to have children."

But one of the most amazing things I got to do with each year I would get to spend a night in the zoo. My fellow counselors and I would camp out in the second floor orangutan viewing area, which had a roof over it. While all of the times were wonderful, the first time I got to spend the night I decided I wasn't going to sleep at all, but stay up the entire night. And I did. Although this was probably a stupid idea, throughout the night I'd get up and walk around the zoo, chatting with the security guards and just looking at the mostly empty exhibits (many of the animals have indoor accommodations for the night). But around five in the morning, the zoo would come to life. First the howler monkey would start shouting, then the birds, then the big cats, then the elephants...it was like going from a world of stillness into a world of light and life in one orchestrated move. It was glorious, to say the least.

And that is largely why saving nature is something to care about. I said this in a previous post, but my favorite book, Last Chance to See, is all about finding the world's endangered species and showing how people have dedicated their lives to saving them. And I'm reusing this quote, because it is SO GOOD: "There is one last reason for caring, and I believe no other reason is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos, and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them."

I've been in the theoretical darker place. I was cold, and slightly downhearted, but when those animals woke up with the dawn and the zoo became alive again, wow. I want the world to always be alive like that, to always be filled with the sounds of animals being joyful to the morning.