"He had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once."
- Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
Dr. Robert Shumaker isn't having a good month. The President of the Indianapolis Zoo has been dealing with a spree of bad luck at the institution. First of all, two rare tortoises were stolen from the zoo, though they were thankfully recovered. Then, a bottlenose dolphin - who was on birth control - gave birth to a male calf, which then did not survive, putting the staff through an emotional rollercoaster. Then, most recently, a chimp escaped from the zoo's new chimpanzee exhibit. There are few animals which would terrify me more to have on the loose than a chimp - when I first heard the news, the ape was still out of its enclosure, and I was fearing the worst, both for the animal and for the staff. Thankfully, she was recaptured without too much incident.
Speaking of chimps, Shumaker had his hand bitten by a chimp earlier this year, losing a portion of a finger. Maybe he was worried that the word got out and the chimps were out for more.
They say bad things come in threes, so hopefully that wraps up Indy's bad luck. The truth is, though, that I've noticed that when rough things happen to a zoo, they tend to keep piling on for a while. My theory is that the staff, worn out and rattled by disasters, becomes exhausted and more prone to slip up. Or, you start vigilantly guarding yourself against one potential problem that you let your guard down towards others. You become so paranoid about letting an animal escape, for example, that all of your attention zeroes in on shifting and checking locks, that you overlook something else.
Totally been there.
And, that being said, there's also such thing as coincidence and bad luck. Good zoos can have streaks of bad luck, just as bad zoos can have undeserved good luck.
Hopefully, Indianapolis has used up their bad luck and things look ahead for a bright new year.
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