Descriptive Essay About Zoos

“What was that?” My brother and I turned to each other with the same look of confusion on our faces. It was a nice day in sunny California’s central coast, and I decided to visit our local “zoo.” I use the term zoo loosely as it lies on a 5-acre property. We had been told that it wasn’t the nicest zoo and the animals didn’t seem happy. I took it upon myself to form my own opinion and dragged my brother along for the ride. We arrived to a small gateway where we were told to “pay for our tickets inside the gift shop.” The gift shop was riddled with everything you would find in an overpriced gift shop: plastic snow globes, postcards, and tacky teeshirts. Standard stuff. I paid seven bucks a ticket; the same price per ticket as another, larger zoo I frequented, mind you. Reluctantly, I paid, unaware of what the day and zoo would have in store for me, and to a

The noise, in question, was a long, low, and very loud bellowing wail. It traveled throughout, though not very large, the entirety of the zoo. We stood watching a wallaby itch itself on its face before the noise occurred again. We walked around the perimeter of the small zoo before finally arriving at the source of the sound. What we saw was an 8.9 - 10 foot long bengal tiger pacing the confines of his habitat. He raised his large head to the sky and howled his cry of pain again. The sound was unlike anything I had ever heard. Imagine a house cats cry but ten times louder and ten times deeper. The tiger slowly walked back and forth around it’s pen, restless and uneasy. It walked over the the bars of the cage and looked up at a little piece of meat sitting wedged between a tree branch and metal. It struggled to grab the little bit of meat before walking off to wail his solemn cry once more. This went on for another hour and I began to wonder if I had ever once seen an employee there beside the woman that sold us the tickets in the gift shop. To this day I still don’t remember if it was