The human buffet

I took my mother to the Point Defiance Zoo. Although I like Point Defiance Park, I have to admit that the zoo is less than impressive. Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo is much more interesting. Anyway, the tiger cage is no longer a cage: it's a habitat display, behind a thick wall of plexiglass. And a magnificent Bengal tiger specimen was pacing back and forth restlessly as we walked up. I managed to snap a few pictures, since it paced up and down without interruption, and oblivious to any attempt to catch its attention, with OCD regularity.

My mother pointed out to me, as we walked away, that the tiger was most likely angry, that it could see all the defenseless little children, in the strollers pushed up right against the plexiglass, and the toddlers who'd run right up and wave at the tiger--but couldn't get any. Like a big, rotating buffet of succulent human infants, and for some reason there's an impenetrable barrier that keeps it forever off limits. That's probably more than a predatory cat's mind can handle. I say the kind thing to do would be to give it a baby now and then, just to let it know that it's not all for nothing.