Sana'a Zoo

The city doesn't do well when it rains.
It was one of my friend's last days in Yemen and he decided to go out with a bang. After spending the morning driving out to the edge of the city to have his photo taken on a motorcycle while holding a Kalashnikov in the air with a hunting falcon on his shoulder, he wanted to go to the city zoo. 'Interesting' is the best word to describe the place. As we walked up to the gates I felt some trepidation as zoos outside America and Europe tend to be depressing enough to warrant Prozac dispensers and lithium milkshakes within the grounds. As Yemen's national zoo goes it certainly isn't the worst out there but it's still enough to make one go 'awww' and cringe inside as another piece of innocence is taken away with the laughing wind.


This fat-tail sheep is the zoo's headliner and he knows it.
It being Friday, the last day of the weekend and the big religious day of the week, it was family day at the zoo. However, we were informed that, unlike back home where family day means you get a discount when you bring the kids, in Yemen family day means only families are allowed in. Our Somali friend that we sent to the ticket window (to avoid getting the extra 'white foreigner' charge) was sent away because 'he wasn't with any women'. We sent up one of our own next who just said, 'Yeah, I'm here with my family'. Our group of four guys was given a surly look by the guard taking the tickets as we played the 'I'm an American who doesn't speak your demon-tongue' game immortalized by our tourists worldwide, thus avoiding his questions about the location of our women.

Chutes for what could only be scientifically formulated, baboon-specific popcorn.
The zoo actually had an impressive collection of animals that you rarely see in captivity (because they generally do... poorly when confined). Hyenas, mongeese, honey badgers, baboons, and several very rare wildcats native to the Arabian Peninsula. There were a few other species of animals divided into what must be universally-followed zoo sections: tame animals, birds, wild animals and monkeys. Among all the mammals was the obsessive-compulsive behavior you find in caged animals: some lions would rub their head along the length of fence and back; a hyena would run to one side of its cage, rub its neck up the wall as high as it could go on its hindlegs, then run to the other side and do likewise, repeating this pattern indefinitely; a mongoose zipped around its cage in an X, pausing every 10 seconds to look out of the same bars. It's behavior that you never see in the wild and only very rarely see in a US zoo, but here it was just everywhere except among the cage of fat-tailed sheep, who just seemed happy they weren't going to get eaten any time soon (the name comes from their fatty tail, which is the size of a large human palm; it's a delicacy I haven't been able to find yet)

And on the way out of the zoo, more animals. And a Yemeni man wearing an Eagles jersey.
It was pointed out to me by a friend that in the Middle East (and much of the world in general) there are no anthropomorphic cartoons for children. No Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny or Simba, no sympathetic characters that make you go "NO! They got Bambi's mom!" Animals are rarely pets and often a food source. Each day you run into the butcher's shop to order some fresh chicken or lamb. Dogs and cats are stray animals that pick through the trash and carry disease. It's the opposite of the US, where pet ownership is ubiquitous, animals rights are fairly mainstream and where we have very well-publicized societies of loons who are well-off enough to tell us to 'Save the Sea Kittens!' ('Sea Kitten' is socially maladjusted speak for 'fish')

And one more pic of Leg-Head for the road.