Apr
21
Lincoln Park animals rock out
Filed Under Green Events
The first thing that struck me walking into the Green Apple Festival at Lincoln Park Zoo was the bass.
The Chicago Afrobreat Project had taken the stage.
The guitars and rhythm were blasting. I could feel the bass vibrating my heart. There was a crowd gathered to listen. Many young women were dressed in colorful, flowing skirts dancing animatedly close to the stage.
Not everyone was so happy.
Several environmental organizations had set up their booths near the music. As passers-by came near, they had to shout above the din to be heard. Some had given up, and sat back in their chairs. When someone interested came by for information, they passively pushed a flyer at them. They had given up trying to compete, the music had won.
And the poor animals? I found myself thinking.
I looked around. The lions were sprawled out sunbathing, looking not the slightest bit disturbed by all the ruckus.
“Earlier they were roaring a lot,” said one guy who was at a stand that hooked up old bicycles to generators and old motors to power small appliances. “I don’t think they like it. Now they’re just trying to igore it I guess.”
Later I ran into someone who worked for the zoo, and asked him casually about if the volume level could harm the animals.
“No,” he assured me. “The more skittish creatures we take inside. But the rest of them—the lions, for example—they don’t seem to care.”
Hmmm, I thought. What about the lions that were apparently roaring earlier?
I mentioned it to the coordinator of environmental initiatives for the zoo. She also assured me that it did not harm the animals whatsoever. We have people who look into that before anything like this gets past the planning stage, she said. The animals come first, we wouldn’t have anything like this if it weren’t OK with the animals.
I mentioned that I’d heard the lions had been roaring.
Oh they roar when they’re happy, she said. Nothing could be going on, it could just be an ordinary Tuesday morning, and they still roar. But most of the time, they sleep.