Sunday, August 24, 2003

WELCOME DISTRACTIONS

Honestly...given the nature of most news coverage did it ever occur to you that folks might be visiting the zoo this week?
The zoo, once the Middle East's largest with 450 animals, now has just 80 on display. Some, such as the big cats and other carnivores, were retrieved from the bizarre menageries maintained by Uday and other regime members.

Word of its reopening is spreading. Smiling families stroll the grounds, splashing through a paddleboat canal to relieve the 120-degree heat.

"We have a safe haven here," says Lawrence Anthony, director of Thula Thula game preserve in Zululand, South Africa, and a leader of the zoo's rescue. "There's a war going on around us, but here, everything is going well. It's an island of peace in a war zone."

Ali Mahdi, a shop owner with two sons and three nephews in tow, is grateful that U.S. soldiers saved the zoo. "During the war," he says, "so many people came here and looted the animals."

He grins optimistically when asked about the future: "If you come to Baghdad in six months, you will see something new and different."

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