I used to live a bike ride away from the Lincoln Park Zoo on Chicago's beautiful lakefront. In fact, at the time I worked graveyard shift, so I would make the trek at least twice a week. My favorite stop was the old polar bear exhibit where I could sit for hours and watch "MY" huge fluffy white bears play.
One day the exhibit was closed and I learned that one of my beloved bears had died - choked on a marshmallow that some asshole (pardon my language, but it's the best I can do) threw into the bears' pit in spite of the signs that clearly state "DO NOT FEED THE POLAR BEARS".
I was heartbroken and did not return to the zoo for two years until they had built a new habitat - one that makes it much more difficult for visitors who disobey rules to successfully toss food to the polar bears.
Even so, on my second or third visit, I caught a guy (of a non-English-speaking persuasion. Comprende?) throwing peanuts over the new high glass patrician. The nuts couldn't reach the bears, but that was not the point. So, with my usual flare for being subtle, right in front of his wife and six kids, I picked him off his feet and threw his sorry ass face-first into the "DO NOT FEED" sign and told him that if he threw one more nut I'd throw HIM over the glass. Funny... he understood that just fine.
Moral to this story: don't feed my polar bears - particularly if I am at the zoo that day.
I did have a chance to take some spectacular photos this summer (2007) - albeit through green tinted glass walls. But I had fun, the bears had fun, and I hope you have fun looking at them.
