Ticks

Welcome to the National Zoo, Ticks.

**May 10, 1901** Welcome? Today marks the beginning of an immense journey. I was kindly providing my friend, the coyote, with his weekly brusceolis immunization. Suddenly, impenetrable nets, spider-like webs were thrown over his body and we were swept up into darkness. Word on the crates says we are heading to new land. My brothers and sisters of Yellowstone believe this is the end of a prosperous era. The two legged creatures promise "the advancement of science and the instruction and recreation of the people." Are these the same two legged men of the West? If not, there is hope. If so, I fear my brothers and sisters may be correct.

**May 20, 1901** These men are just the same as the last. They are obsessed with taking photographs, painting landscapes and wildlife, desperate that the sights and images will flee their memory. A zoo is precisely that- a manmade system of cages to preserve man's sights so that they cannot flee. Fortunately, I am too small to be seen and admired by the passersby. Today, I considered leaving everyone, wondering where I could go. Wandering around the zoo, I met a longhorn. He was from Yellowstone and said he was the first of his kind brought over to the east by humans. The evil man who brought him here is called Charles “Buffalo Jones.” He was one out of 185 animals under the care of a man named “William Temple Hornaday,” who was known as the “Curator of Living Animals.” He and the other 184 Yellowstone critters were destined to be taxidermy models, forced to live bound by fences behind the Smithsonian Institution Building.



The Longhorn however was spared (along with a few other of his friends who were sent to a land called “Philadelphia”) and ended up staying in the mammal collection in Washington. He arrived in the east in 1888, explaining to me that this system of establishing zoos in the east has been in practice for years now. (It turns out that I and my Yellowstone friends are merely “the latest shipment.”) While this may seem like a silly, insignificant story, it was from this one encounter that I received some crucial information. The longhorn gave me some the name “Hornaday” and pointed him out in a crowd of visitors. He also described a white building from which the wardens of the zoo such as Hornaday received so much power. Prior to talking to the longhorn, I was nearly ready to leave the zoo forever. But I feel obligated to learn what I can by exploring the zoo and relaying the information to my Yellowstone brothers and sisters here in the zoo.

**May 30, 1901** Today, I took a brief scope of the park. I found that each animal of the park in the different exhibit has some neat information as to how these humans came to power (such as information they have received from their exhibit managers/zoo keepers. Below is a map of the park I found in the hands of Hornaday, the man the Longhorn first pointed out to me. As I come across these animals and get some information through discussion, I will let you know hwere and when in the park it was.



Not only are the exotic animal shipments attributing to the influx of disease throughout the park, so is the increase in migration. For some reason humans are drawn to the eastern portion of the United States. (With all these prison-like zoos, its difficult to imagine how that could be the case.) Anyway, just like the beasts they exhibit, they too bring with them exotic bacteria. Below is a chart demonstrating the rates of immigration to the United States throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

