Maisy Sylvan | The Philadelphia Zoo is open for the summer — don’t go
(06/24/21 9:58pm)
My mother, who grew up in Bala Cynwyd, used to visit the Philadelphia Zoo regularly with my grandmother and on school field trips. When I ask my mother about the zoo, she first describes the Victorian structures bookending the zoo’s wrought iron entrance gate and peacocks swaggering freely around the grounds. As a grassroots animal rights activist, however, her nostalgia is quickly eclipsed by melancholy. In a softer tone, she describes an obese walrus idling apathetically in a swimming pool not much larger than its own circumference. Even as a child, she says, she could tell that something was wrong as she looked on at cheetahs and leopards pacing neurotically in barren, concrete enclosures.