Today I went with my family to the Mendoza zoo to what I thought would a enlightening learning experience but instead turned into a series of dreadful, painful and eye-opening mental images. From my perspective, all the animals I saw in this prison for the innocent were suffering. Suffering because of stress, poor hygiene and a solitary state of mind they were in. Their minuscule cages did not help to improve their current deteriorating state and most of them were by themselves, alone in their metallic box longing for some type of interaction with the same species or any species for that matter. My parents have taught me to love animals ever since I was a boy. One can imagine how I was churning inside with disbelief mixed with pure anger every time I stopped at new exhibit to see a stressed animal walk in a pattern over and over again day after day in their small prison. I remember being in this zoo 4 years ago and I clearly remember seeing a polar bear pacing around his dried up and dirty pool while it was 23 degrees outside. Today I longed to see if this polar bear was still there. Every inch of my being hoped he had been released into the wild, hoped that he was now surrounded with snow in the arctic somewhere enjoying his solitary freedom. However this was not the case. I saw the same animal in the same cage. He was old, beaten down by the years, which seemed millennia from being locked up so long. Said animal was panting, walking in the same pattern, same direction, and same zombie expression, which I dreadfully witnessed almost half a decade ago. Apart from the polar bear, there were other exhibits worth mention, one of them being the monkey exhibits. Before arriving at said exhibit, my family and I heard their howls, screams and cage rattling which put my mother quite uneasy. Upon arrival I saw what seemed to be some sort of petite shrunken down baboons. Probably 60 of them rallied up in a fairly large rectangular space with iron netting as ceiling which reeked of urine, excrement and what seemed to be stale dog food. Visitors would throw these pellets bought from a shack around the corner and enjoy watching these monkeys tear themselves apart for a pea sized canine snack. This was my depiction of hell. This simply reminded me of the holocaust. The same positions of the monkeys, which I saw, resembled multiple images of STANCES of captured Jews put in line. A repertoire of skinny malnourished, sick, muddy, wet, pregnant, innocent beings, all ready to meet their end in the horrendous infamous gas chambers. This was my depiction of hell. Yet the zookeepers satisfy their conscious (if they have any) by relieving the general audience’s concern saying, “these animals don’t know anything else but the life they have in the zoo”. Even though this is true, their life, their routine, the reality that every animal this zoo holds captive endures, will never be appropriate in the eyes of any sane human being, who has the initiative, the basic notion, to fend for, to protect, to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. This is why I strongly believe that the Mendoza Zoo should be closed or at least, as a last resort, renovated to better accommodate their animals, which they see as a “source of profit”, not fellow earth inhabitants, which are no more and no less than what everyone is. Written by Gary with hope that the our society may change. Change their values, their morals, those of which will be crucial in the distinction between good, rightous, fair, and appalling, unethical, macabre, in our hopefully positive future.