Life Behind Bars – Texas Monthly
Zoos are fine for people, but they make animals go crackers.
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Zoos are fine for people, but they make animals go crackers.
A tiger, a zoo, a terrifying death.
In 1909 Fort Worth purchased from a traveling carnival a lion, two bear cubs, an alligator, a coyote, a peacock, and an escalating population of rabbits. Not to be outdone, the Dallas city fathers, who boasted only some native stock like raccoons and de-scented skunks, purchased Queenie, a retired circus elephant. Houston began zookeeping in 1920 when the National Parks Department presented the city with one lonely bison, who was eventually joined by a bissonnet, and some dispossessed circus stock. What began with an animal here and there burgeoned into an enormous and eclectic menagerie ...