I am not the biggest fan of the zoos. I am not.

Actually, my belief is that it is time to eliminate the zoos from our times. These are brutal places for nice beings, better than us.

Not so long ago, we learnt from the news that two Jaguars were shot and killed in the zoo and shockingly enough, four dolphins were killed in 2012 and 2013 and the zoo kept it a secret from the public. We can prevent this from happening again, by joining one of the many organizations around the World, fighting for animals freedom.

The nice people behind Freedom For Animals for example, they are fighting for their cause since 1957.

Having said that, I can admit that more than a year ago, while having a hard time in my personal life, I decided to visit our zoo. I was hoping that my camera and the wildlife animals might help me distract my mind from sadness.
(Keep on reading if you want to see how did that go)

It was a cold, rainy winter day and I visited the zoo all by myself. Also, since it was another Tuesday with awful weather, there were probably less than 20 visitors.

Most of my time was spent just wandering around, trying to get away from my thoughts. Impressive animals, like the huge crocodile, helped in that direction.

On a second thought, maybe it was just a case of me overcoming my fear in front of (far too many) snakes cages, in order to take some photos of the crocodile.

On this specific day, my guess is that we could see only 1/3 of the animals, maybe because of the rain or the lack of visitors, I don’t know.

Animals are maybe the best prove of God’s existence; and mankind the prove of God’s non-existence.

Zoos are the place to see both of these arguments in front of your eyes.

This little test of mine, going to the zoo with my camera, in order to get away from my problems, was a fail.

Seeing in front of me many animals I had never seen and watching them interact with each other was a kind of healing process, but only for a while.

You cannot escape the thought that these poor souls are imprisoned, most of them thousands of miles away from their natural environment and possibly in very bad conditions.

Somewhere, a giant hippopotamus was wet and dirty and the dead, naked tree beside him, looked like a symbol of the lifeless life of all these beautiful animals.

While standing in front of the giant chimpanzee glass cage, I took this almost black photo. You can only see the sad eyes.

To me, all the animals seemed sad and frightened, but this particular photo sums up my whole visit there: grief and sorrow.

A ZOO IS PRISON | NADINE GORDIMER