RYAN JOHNSON | SO CLOSE, YET SO FAR AWAY FOR INDIANAPOLIS MONTHLY
September 08, 2020 Ryan Johnson
This piece makes my heart melt….moving art by RYAN JOHNSON for Indianapolis Monthly called “So Close, Yet So Far Away” for a piece in The Hoosierist column about how zoos were reporting that their animals were “missing” having visitors.
“Since most of the zoo’s critters have spent their entire lives on lockdown, weathering a pandemic doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. And indeed it wasn’t, according to Melanie Laurendine, the Indianapolis Zoo’s conservation public relations specialist. The staff amused its charges with “daily enrichment activities to keep the animals physically as well as mentally challenged.” Not that some of the animals didn’t miss the crowds. Not surprisingly, the primates seemed
to pine for their hairless, sunburned, stroller-pushing relations the most. “The macaques come to the front of their habitat when people are walking by,” Laurendine says. “And Rocky, one of the orangutans, has always enjoyed interacting with people. Since we reopened, he has been coming over to the glass to see visitors.”
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