Taken together, the narratives of how the animals ended up at Lowry Park revealed as much about Homo sapiens as they revealed about the animals themselves. The precise details–how and where each was born, how they were separated from their mothers and taken into custody, all they had witnessed and experienced on their way to becoming the property of this particular zoo–could have filled an encyclopedia with insights into human behavior and psychology, human geopolitics and history and commerce. Lowry Park’s very existence declared our presumption of supremacy, the ancient belief that we have been granted dominion over other creatures and have the right to do with them as we please. The zoo was a living catalogue of our fears and obsessions, the ways we see animals and see ourselves, all the things we prefer not to see at all. Every corner of the grounds revealed our appetite for amusement and diversion, no matter what the cost. Our longing for the wildness we have lost inside ourselves. Our instinct to both exalt nature and control it. Our deepest wish to love and protect other species even as we scorch their forests and poison their rivers and shove them toward oblivion. All of it was on display in the garden of captives. Thomas French
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More Quotes By Thomas French
  1. Be careful of love. It'll twist your brain around and leave you thinking up is down and right is wrong.

  2. We're staying together, " he promised. "You're not getting away from me. Never again.

  3. The world was collapsing, and the only thing that really mattered to me was that she was alive.

  4. Afterward, I had the last laugh. I made an air bubble at the bottom of the lake. Our friends kept waiting for us to come up, but hey-when you are the son of Poseidon, you don't have to hurry. And it was pretty much the...

  5. They send a person who can never stay, " she whispered. "Who can never accept my offer of companionship for more than a little while. They send me a hero I can't help. . just the sort of person I can't help falling in love...

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