Saturday, April 10, 2010

Bad Day At The Zoo


Everyone associated with the Rio Grande Zoo in New Mexico was horrified to discover their beloved giraffe Kashka had been dismembered and stuffed in a dumpster, but how else are you going to get a giraffe in a dumpster?

Kashka had recently been euthanized when she suffered a devastating leg injury after falling. It is not surprising that a simple fall might be more consequential to such a highly vertical animal, and Kashka was said to have had six calves, so that compounds the injury. There is a protocol involved, of course, with disposal of zoo animals. They are never tossed in the lion's cage: visitors do not appreciate that much Nature. And apparently there is no cemetery. This is certainly a relief to the grounds crew, inasmuch as a simple grave would not suffice for the likes of a giraffe, which would require a trench no matter how you fold it up. The standard procedure is to remove the dead animal to the local landfill. The zoo employee responsible for disposing of Kashka had, in fact, previously ushered a sea lion to the landfill, so he was no doubt familiar with the plan. But time gets tight, there's always an immense amount of clean-up to accomplish at any zoo, there's one's Facebook page to update, and let's face it: the contents of the dumpster do end up in the landfill. Nevertheless the employee was not commended for his efficiency.

It is hard to imagine how he was able to chop up the giraffe and get it in the dumpster without anyone knowing about it. But that is the story, and the zoo is sticking to it. The grisly discovery was made by the local garbage driver, who is said to have spotted the giraffe in the dumpster--at least the parts that weren't already spotted. He was taken aback.

It put me in mind of a similar caper in this area in the nineties. A woman was discovered to have murdered her boyfriend, cut him up into little pieces and, over time, flushed him down the toilet. According to her roommate, the woman had previously threatened to "blow him up," and spent a lot of time in her extremely foul-smelling bedroom, emerging occasionally with items in plastic bags. Furthermore, she carried a toilet plunger in her car, and there was a large "pool of organic matter" in the attic. All of this struck the authorities as suspicious. But what finally did her in was the discovery of boyfriend nuggets in the septic tank in the back yard. She might have gotten away clean if she'd just been on the sewer system.

I do feel for the garbage man at the zoo. It must have given him quite a start. Back when we had an adorable terrier dog, I clipped her fur every summer out in the back yard. On one of these occasions, I arranged her clippings into a terrier sculpture and left it out on the lawn. When Dave came home, he thought the dog had died. After we laughed about that, I woke up the next day and glanced out at the lawn and had the same reaction, and I'd put it there. We agreed to put the fur in the garbage can, where it horrified us both one more time each. That's four dead dog scares in two days. I'm sure it would have been even worse with a giraffe.

38 comments:

  1. Seems a little inefficient to just throw all that good meat away.

    I had a persian cat once and I would shave him too every spring but I never thought of arranging the fur into dead cat pose.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Where do you come up with these bizarre stories - (and photos!!!) I've always said that truth certainly is stranger than fiction! You really cannot fault the zoo employee - but I guess he was the one who was responsible for moving the animal to the local landfill - thus avoiding shock and outrage for the local dumpster driver. (However, he would have needed the giant sized truck plus crane to move the giraffe, and they probably only allow him to drive a pickup).
    Your dog photo shocked me until I read "the rest of the story". When I was young the neighbor's parakeet (Putzi) died and was sealed into a plastic bag and put in the top shelf of the chest freezer (I never found out why, but he remained there for years). It would delight us to bring in a "new kid" and ask them if they wanted a popsicle - just to see their reaction to the Putzi-sicle!
    Another great post!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Deb: I had an iguana in my freezer for a while, too, and everyone knew about it. No one ever wanted me to bring guacamole to a party.

    Ellen: did you leave the fur on the head alone? So your cat looked like a toilet brush?

    ReplyDelete
  4. It never occurred to me to wonder what happened to dead zoo animals. I think I assumed they were chopped up and fed to the other animals. I mean, how would a visitor tell Kashka nuggets from any other type of feedstuff? Anyway, why does Kashka go to landfill? Shouldn't the meaty bits be recycled for compost?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thank you so much for the comic relief - I needed it today!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Errrrr - "iguana in my freezer for a while" - ah, um, soooooooo - dare I ask where it went when it left the freezer? (It could have also been masked as pea soup ya know!)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Okay, it was really in Mary Ann's freezer, but it was my iguana, and I don't want to talk about it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. This is so weird, I don't even know where to start.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Okay, now it's getting weirder. I was in the Major Crimes Unit of the Clark County Sheriff's Office ("near Portland") when we had the homicide case you described (boyfriend flushed down toilet into septic tank). Do you want to know what was in those plastic bags??? It was the head and bones of the boyfriend. And to top it all off, she buried those bits and pieces in her grandma's garden. Gag.
    Keep on writing Murr, love it all! Four dead dog scares in two days, what a hoot!

    ReplyDelete
  10. See, there you are. I do not make this stuff up. The boyfriend was related to someone I worked with; the whole family suspected the evil girlfriend, but hadn't gotten quite to the point of imagining he'd been flushed. So the bags just contained the non-flushable parts? I feel a Zip-Loc ad coming on. Keep that Just-Whacked Freshness!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Reminds me of burying Sammy the pony when he died on the Friday night beginning a really rainy Memorial Day weekend... and Jerry had to quick rent a backhoe.... and do a really, really fast buriel..."I'm only going to bury him once" as the hole was filling with water.... and then there was the owl we stored in our freezer for my sister.... geesh Mary.... we really are a strange family...

    ReplyDelete
  12. I'm laughing.

    Love the terrier sculpture.
    Had not heard about the giraffe (or the boyfriend) but ewwww.

    I was going to do something with the dog hair on our floors... Maggie sheds like a whole dog every day. I keep thinking that eventually her hair will just grow...out. And she'll be bald. Then, I can gather up the hair from the floors and furniture and our clothes and knit her a sweater.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Haha absolutely adored the dog clippings story.

    R.I.P Kashka

    ReplyDelete
  14. You know, Murr, any one of these would have been a whole blogpost in itself. But all three? I'm in a fetal position with my hands kind of curled up around my face.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Wow. The things that never cross my mind...like what they do with dead zoo animals. I guess I thought they cremated them or something. That seems more efficient and greener. Shouldn't zoos be about the green??

    Love the dog hair sculpture! That would go over big at our house. By big I mean Sean and I would totally laugh our butts off at everyone we managed to get with that!

    Thanks for the giggles. I need them this week.
    ♥Spot

    ReplyDelete
  16. There's only one word for it: Kashkaesque.

    ReplyDelete
  17. boyfriend nuggets!! Hysterical. And that's a pretty damn good fur-rendering of a terrier. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  18. did you know, a giraffe's tongue is SO rough, it can abrade the the skin right off of you, like coarse sandpaper. i don't know if that has any relevance, but i thought it was interesting trivia anyway!

    ReplyDelete
  19. serves them right, they should have hired a butcher to get rid of the body. will that be steaks or pot roast?

    ReplyDelete
  20. I think I am finally finished laughing. thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  21. Kashkaesque! Splendid.
    Items like giraffe-tongue roughitude are always relevant. You never know when a tidbit of information will come in handy.
    And butchersboy: we're simple folk. We'll just gnaw on the neckbones. For a year.

    ReplyDelete
  22. I love your "dead" dog.

    Once, while boating at a lake in Colorado, I found the perfectly flattened skin of a baby deer. It looked for all the world like it'd been prancing through a meadow when some strange, unseen force instantly removed all its innards, muscles and bones, leaving only the dessicated, flattened skin behind. Much to the horror of one of our companions, the rest of us on the trip had a great time with that deer skin, making it walk and talk for us for hours. I've rarely laughed so hard.

    And, yes, I know I need help. But not so much help that anybody needs to be checking my septic tank.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Hmm...I think I have another flattened fauna post coming up in a couple weeks. Stay tuned!

    If anybody checked my septic tank, they'd think I needed help, but not that kind of help.

    ReplyDelete
  24. You would think that an giraffe skeleton would make for a great exhibit... but maybe natural history museums are over run with them. But I makes me wonder what they do when something like an elephant dies!!?? Oh the humanity!

    ReplyDelete
  25. Seriously, Robert. I mean if putting them in the dumpster is bad for our sensibilities, how is trucking them down the highway on a flatbed trailer going to go over?

    ReplyDelete
  26. What a story about the euthanized giraffe. I would think it would be difficult physically but also emotionally to dispose of the giraffe like this. I wonder how other zoos take care of things like this.

    ReplyDelete
  27. I seriously didn't think it was physically possible to gag and giggle at the same time. I have proved myself wrong. It's not the disposition of the giraffe remains that got me,(I've worked at a zoo for 22 years, and oh, the stories I could tell...Robert would probably be interested), it was the thought of Bagged Boyfriend Bits in Gramma's garden. Yeech.

    And I want to be the first to volunteer to go on a boating trip with MikeWJ so I can play Fun With Flattened Fauna too!

    ReplyDelete
  28. Being on the biological side of the equation, I can report that the remains of some deceased zoo animals do go on to great careers in research labs and museums, but there is only so much room in collections for the bones and someone needs to prep them first. Prepping a large animal is necessarily a rather large and drawn out procedure.

    I heard a number of horror stories about large animals while interning at the Smithsonian, talking to friends at the New Jersey State Museum and here at Rutgers.

    And I have my own stories about frozen fauna! My mom was open minded about my biological interests and allowed me to use the freezer door to store my specimens. She used to get a thrill out of sending innocent guests down to get something from the freezer and then listening to their shrieks when they found something scalier than steak...

    ReplyDelete
  29. You made the dog fur look good okay. I would have thought sure it was a badly decomposed doggie.

    ReplyDelete
  30. That was the oddest picture of a giraffe I've ever seen!!!!!!
    Lindsey Petersen

    ReplyDelete
  31. Hmmm, good point about trucking the zoo carcasses down the highway on a flat bed... so, the best business opportunities come from an unmet need. Any investors out there interested in getting in on the ground floor for the new Zoo-omatic? Your complete, environmentally friendly zoo animal disposal program?

    ReplyDelete
  32. That was the oddest picture of a giraffe I've ever seen!!!!!!
    Lindsey Petersen

    ReplyDelete
  33. What a story about the euthanized giraffe. I would think it would be difficult physically but also emotionally to dispose of the giraffe like this. I wonder how other zoos take care of things like this.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Hmm...I think I have another flattened fauna post coming up in a couple weeks. Stay tuned!

    If anybody checked my septic tank, they'd think I needed help, but not that kind of help.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Deb: I had an iguana in my freezer for a while, too, and everyone knew about it. No one ever wanted me to bring guacamole to a party.

    Ellen: did you leave the fur on the head alone? So your cat looked like a toilet brush?

    ReplyDelete
  36. Seems a little inefficient to just throw all that good meat away.

    I had a persian cat once and I would shave him too every spring but I never thought of arranging the fur into dead cat pose.

    ReplyDelete