Let these leopards go!

Snow leopards: rare, endangered big cats. And their name suggests the part of the world where they’re native: the high, bitterly cold mountains of Central Asia.

So, then, what are two snow leopard cubs doing in Cape May, NJ? Easy. They are born-in-captivity residents of the Cape May County Zoo. It is to laugh (after sighing, gnashing teeth, fist-shaking).

The claim: that zoos around the world are helping to conserve these animals by housing and breeding them. Hmmmm. How’s that? These babies were never in the wild, nor will they be. They exist to be in the zoo, in this case, a south Jersey zoo.

That may be a fate worse than death, or extinction. “Extinction is forever,” the saying goes, but if an animal could be consulted, would s/he choose life in a zoo? Would any animal make that choice, if given the chance?

OK, so humans can visit the zoo and see the snow leopards – which are heavily furred animals, the better to withstand weather in the Himalayas. Then what? Maybe they’ll contribute to the Snow Leopard Trust, an organization proclaiming its desire to conserving the animal? Then what? More snow leopards in zoos?

Gee, maybe they could become circus animals too, like the tigers who are on the same endangered list. Or the pandas, ditto, who also populate zoos?

Is a "zoo snow leopard" (which I’ve read can’t be released to the wild, by the way) a real snow leopard? Would it be more intelligent and humane to let these creatures go extinct if they must, rather than making them into captive models for tee shirts and tote bags? Talk about fates worse than death. Or extinction.
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'To a Cheetah in the Moscow Zoo'

Furs this expensive you normally only find wrapped around the shoulders
Of gangsters’ molls outside the casino, movements this slinky
Only on the catwalk from the androgynous models,
Eyes dilating in the flashbulbs. As lean as a feline
As Pisanello once painted with a ravished brush
(The fur spotted, whiskery, a golden fleece).
She sashays swishing up and back. Her spine measures out
The least movement.

[triple indent here] To change direction
Millimeters in front of the ditch is something for which
She doesn’t even need eyes. There’s nothing out there
For the ear or the sensitive nose but the noise and sweat
Beyond the wire fence, where those monkeys congregate
With their baby carriages at visiting time. Her breath
Coming hard, she magics the fetor of the metropolis
Into a charmed ozone . . . the white ribbons
In the girls’ hair into strips of gazelle meat. Her fine head,
No bigger than your fist, keeps it alert posture
As she spies zebras in the flickering at the gates of Moscow.
Then she yawns, the prisoner of the cement.

--Durs Grunbein, from The Bedside Book of Beasts (see Jan. 20, 2010)