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My Mom, Diane, always had the news on. Due to her job in advertising, she lived and breathed pop culture. She got paid for knowing what the trends were, and more importantly, weren’t. The screen transitioned to a story about a zoological theme park called ZooGilla as Diane frowned. Apparently, they were featured in a new documentary about in-breading. In the world of advertising, the saying goes that “There is no such thing as bad publicity”. This had been proven false however for ZooGilla. Because of the documentary and subsequent coverage, many people had boycotted the park. This, along with an overall decreasing interest in zoological parks led the company into crisis mode. They immediately took the easiest solution to their problem, firing staff, lowering ticket pricing, and ramping up advertising. My mother just so happened to be contracted to work on this campaign.
Diane often felt torn that she couldn’t spend more time with her son, Ian. Often when she was driving him to school she would have to be in a teleconference, and Ian would have to quietly play on his handheld console, instead of telling his mother about what was happening in school, or the new additions he made to his Minecraft world. After she got out of work, she helped him with his homework, played a game if she had the energy, and then collapsed into bed. Although Ian’s father was still around and stayed at home, he was often pre-occupied with playing poker on the computer, or watching NASCAR, which Ian found profoundly boring. As Ian grew up, he became more secluded. He found it difficult to make friends, and was often bullied due to not being interested in whatever fad the cool kids were into. To hopefully help combat this, Diane enrolled him into Scouting, and other after school activities to mixed success.
Diane saw this new contract as an opportunity. As part of the promotional material, each employee and contractor received free tickets for them and their families to go to ZooGilla, to help them “better appreciate the park and its mission”. She could learn more about the client’s product and spend time with her son. She would have preferred to have taken the entire family, but her husband had a very important NASCAR race to watch. Although the value of mother-son bonding is priceless, being able to do it at a theme park for free is also a great incentive.
We arrived at the park that weekend. The longest line we waited in all day was to pay for parking, as only one pay booth of the ten built was open. The parking lot was comprised of more cracks than pavement. It was a similar story at the entrance to the park, with only two elderly folks at the gates with scanners. We went through the turn bars and entered into the park. The main street area consisted of a large gift shop, guest services, and a large outdoor dining area, all lightly African themed. Nearby was the main train station.
We rode the train that encircled the park to get to the thrill rides in the “Go Ape Thrill Zone”, located in the back of the park, before anyone else. The signage for the train promised “up close and personal views of the animals and surrounding natural beauty”. Conveniently left out of this description was the fact that we were ensnared by fences on both sides. One to keep the outside world out, which was tactfully decorated with barbed wire, and a second to keep the animals in. The ride attendant, who had clearly been working here for far too long, made no attempt to act as though she was conducting the locomotive. She said her spiel so automatically and without thought, that calling what came out of her mouth words would be generous. With the loud sound of screeching wheels, the train pulled into the second station, located on the opposite side of the park. The pseudo conductor said “wtchurstpasyubordthetrin” as we disembarked. It would seem that rushing to the back of the park to get to the “Thrill Zone” first wasn’t necessary. The line for the most popular attraction, the “Ape Escape” only consisted of a few dozen people. The ride was an off the shelf boomerang rollercoaster. After boarding the attraction and having our restraints checked, we were slowly pulled backwards up a hill, and then released to fall into a small course with a few inversions. The rollercoaster car then went up a hill opposite of the first, and then did the course again backwards. It left my heart pounding, not only because of how thrilling the attraction was, but also the questionable rattling heard throughout. I retrieved my items from the wooden cubbies built out of splintering two by fours, whose paint stain had long been stripped away. The attraction exited out through a giftshop, with a fully stocked cooler of Coca-Cola, and half stocked shelves of Plush monkeys, T-shirts, and mugs, with the park’s logo poorly printed on them.
Running through the spine of the park was the icon of the destination, printed on every brochure. Instead of the animals being enclosed in an artificial habitat, the visitors were. The structure consisted of vertical concrete pillars that jutted out of the ground. Large steel beams were bolted to these pillars, and formed the walkway that ran through the middle of the park. On either side were concrete walls with handrails that went up to waist height. This was enclosed on top by a half cylinder of scratched up clear plastic, where people had scratched out their names, or random profanities and symbols. Diane wondered how she would go about photographing this without showing that “LIZ WAS HERE" or any of the other artistic additions. For about half a mile this ran over wetlands and the animals that lived in them, the most famous being the monkeys. Because monkeys were not native to this region however, they were imported from Sub-Saharan Africa, and then encouraged to mate. This quickly resulted in inbreeding, which reduced the ape’s natural self-preservation and overall shortened their lifespan.
As they walked through the cylinder, they kept hearing loud banging sounds echoing down the long passageways. It was starting to give Ian a headache. He wanted to turn around, but Diane said they needed to continue.
“We did what you wanted, now we’re going to do what I want, and main point of this trip was for me, as their promoter, to see the entire facility.”
“fine, whatever”, Ian responded, in a non-committal tone.
Diane wasn’t exactly pleased with this response, but at his age she would take what she could get. Every couple hundred feet there were decals on the enclosure with information about what we were supposed to be looking at, the monkeys, and native vegetation. Diane struggled to read a large majority of them, because they all had large chunks missing, due to bored tourists picking at them. In addition, most of the noted plants were not to be found. The surrounding vegetation was largely allowed to grow freely, resulting in almost everything being covered in invasive kudzu. The plant grows rapidly, and covers almost all others. It however, offered some nutritional value to the equally non-native gorillas.
Ian tried texting my friends about the rides, and how he was getting dragged around, but had no signal. “Great” He said, sarcastically. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something. He jogged down the corridor ahead of Diane. Between two sections of the walkway, the large rubber gasket meant to seal the tube had rotted and shifted. There was a gap—large enough to stick an entire arm through.
To be continued...