Rain Day at the Zoo

The Edinburgh Zoo in the rain was a much busier place than I anticipated.  Despite the liberal peppering of yellow weather warnings on the Met office website, there were three eager families ahead of me in line for admission.

Long-time volunteer Heather had offered to take me on her own personal tour of the zoo.  She was waiting for me in the drizzle by the meerkat enclosure.  The meerkats were all piled together in their indoor space, snoozing away the bad dream of Scottish Summer, but many of the other animals in the zoo were more active than I’d seen them before.  Who knew bad weather could bring out the action at the zoo.

Heather and I got a lift to the top of the hill and started making our way down.  Our first visit was to the anteater, who was up and snuffling about, albeit inside.  We descended past the lion cage.  Uncharacteristically for a feline, the new young lioness was on the prowl, giving a handful of human visitors a lazy-eyed look over.  A few doors down from her, I caught my first ever glimpse of one of the zoo’s elusive Scottish Wildcats.  She at least must be used to the rain.

Most of the New World monkeys were out, including the Living Links Capuchins, but then most of them hail from rainforests.  Their neighbours, the squirrel monkeys, were staging a food raid on their enclosure.  Heather had loads of stories to share about the residents of Living Links, such as the new squirrel monkey alpha male who kept escaping for some peace and quiet and who now spends all his time in the den, making the ladies come to him.  These are some of the sorts of stories I’m hoping to collect while I’m storyteller in residence.

As we wandered down, we scoped out venues for storytelling.  From the lion and zebra viewing huts, that offer some protection from the rain, to the Magic Forest, altogether we identified 15 locations where audiences could be made comfortable and storytellers could be heard, all with the backdrop of the zoo’s residents.

 

First Day in Residence at the RZSS!

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So here’s my exciting news: Today was my first day as Storyteller in Residence for the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.  I was absolutely thrilled to be appointed to this role and I look forward to giving a day a week of my time to the RZSS and its more-than-human communities over the next twelve months.

I was not physically “in residence” today, but instead spent my time getting acquainted with the list of species that live at the RZSS’s two main sites: The Edinburgh Zoo and the Highland Wildlife Park. I also did a bit of planning work for an event I’ll be organising at the Edinburgh zoo as part of the Scottish International Storytelling Festival in October.  More details on the latter in the following weeks.

According to the lists I was given, there are 156 different taxa of animals and over 7000 individuals living in the zoo, 34 taxa and 222 individuals at the wildlife park. I am learning more about the species represented, particularly what their wild ranges would have been, so that I can start collecting traditional tales about the animals visitors will encounter.  I’ve only made it through the mammals and partway through the birds so far, but already I’m getting an appreciation of just how many cultures would have shared (and still do share) their territories with relatives of the zoo’s inhabitants.

Looking at the lists of animals and the places they come from reminds me that biodiversity and cultural diversity are closely interconnected and that cultural diversity is also endangered when animals become extinct.  When people no longer encounter certain animals in their daily lives, will they also stop telling stories about them?  And when people forget the stories their ancestors told about certain animals will they also forget to value those animals?

Friday findings: giving and receiving

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I wanted to write one last giving post before moving on to my next project (which involves giving as you will see).
The act of gift giving is made in relationship, a giver must have a receiver in order for a gift to come into being.  Because stories are at heart gifts, this is echoed in storytellers needing audiences and authors needing readers. A couple of weeks ago, I participated in a storytelling event that was highly enjoyable for tellers and audience alike.  After the final song, one of the tellers thanked the host for her outstanding organisation of the event and her warm presence in holding the performance space for all.  As the audience began to clap, the host in question started mumbling “oh it was nothing” etc., while doing her best to wave away the rising tide of appreciation.  The tellers and audience wanted to give the gift of thanks, by refusing to receive it, our lovely host blocked that transfer of energy.  Stymied, it started to fumble and petered away, leaving an awkward eddy in the room.
With this in mind, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks paying attention to the gifts I’ve been receiving and how I receive them: i.e. trying to do so with grace and gratitude.  The idea of keeping a gratitude journal is so mainstream these days it’s almost not worth mentioning, with studies showing that such an orientation can help improve emotional, mental and physical health .
I’ve received way too many gifts in this period to detail here, gratitude journal style, but here are some highlights: I benefitted from the used cold box (a.k.a. cooler) that Real Foods was giving away to avoid landfilling it, which provided us with cold food storage while we vacationed off the grid.  We borrowed tools from our downstairs neighbours and used them to free a significant section of the back garden form decking, which was also a gift to the garden and its denizens.   My garden, in turn is giving us bounties of beautiful strawberries at the moment.  And the sun has finally been giving us some heat up here in Scotland.  Of course the gift of the sun’s rays also feeds into the production of the strawberries…nature, the original gift economy.
A good way to show your appreciation for gifts is to give them away again. In fact one of the stories told at the above mentioned performance was about this precisely, Duncan Williamson’s The Golden Bowl, beautifully retold by Sheila Kinninmonth.  So I thought I’d end by posting links to some of the gifts I’ve received from the digital world over the last wee while:
The Permaculture Podcast is a wonderful freely given resource with original interviews as well as links to video and other related resources. So my gratitude goes out to Scott Mann for all the work he does making this information available in user-friendly ways.
I’ve been receiving a lot of inspiration from listening to Scott’s interview with Ethan Hughes, who is actively and presently living the gift economy.  Ethan will definitely be joining my virtual group of outsider-witnesses (I promise a more thorough post on what I mean by this in the future).
Inhabitat.com also inspires me on a regular basis, with its coverage of design for sustainability.  This post in particular caught my eye, as it has a lot to do with giving: Feeding Forward
And Yes magazine, which I give financial support to and receive in print, gives me hope by providing news on the positive social and environmental changes that individuals and communities are making.
Finally, on his website, Charles Eisenstein, whose book has in part inspired these thoughts on giving, offers his earlier book The Ascent of Humanity as an audio book as a free download.  This gift was enabled in turn by Lynn Gerry, of the Unwelcome Guests, who read and recorded almost every word.