LATEST UPDATE FROM PATA ZOO 7 November 2016 To the Save Gorilla Little Lotus Campaign Team, I wish I had better news to report from my visit but this is how it went… I could smell the zoo throughout the department store before I found the doors. I paid my 200 Bhat, and my ticket was stamped 07.11.1959, interesting and to be honest that pretty much sums the place up. An out-dated hell hole. I have not visited a zoo of its kind before and was extremely apprehensive, I was prepared for the worst and I was not disappointed. To see farm animals living in pens smaller than my hotel bathroom was distressing. They were standing and sleeping on a grated floor so their waste could fall down and be washed away easily. The primates are living in soulless cages, many clung to the front with sadness and defeat in their eyes, others sat head downcast, others screamed and ran around their cages like they were losing their mind. Little Lotus, was not happy the day I was there, or maybe that’s every day? She sat slumped head down at the edge of the cage, arms and feet wrapped around the bars. Each time I approached her she turned her head away from me and hid her face with her hands, moving away and going into the foetal position on her back or side. To me she seemed like she had given up, given up on everything. Nothing to live for, wishing she was dead. The chimpanzees living opposite her tried desperately to interact with me, passing out a piece of old rope hoping that I would play tug of war with them and would grip my hand, desperation in their eyes. Desperate for some attention, some affection, anything that would break up their miserable existence. They have no living matter in the cages, not a tree, not a branch, not a leaf, nothing. They all try in vain to reach the green leaves planted teasingly in gardens just out of their reach beyond the bars. Like they needed to feel something natural, not just the rusted chains they had to swing on and old tyres to sleep in. The zoo Manager was a young guy, he gladly showed me around his animals, telling me their names. We reached the gibbons, the mother and her baby were hiding up in the corner of the cage. He told me they were very rare to find in the wild in Thailand because of the hunters, I couldn’t help but think to myself that they’d be better off dead than here. Steph