A flamingo1 in the wild won't mind you if you stay more thanthree hundred yards away. Cross that limit and it becomestense. Get even closer and you trigger a flight reaction fromwhich the bird will not cease until the three-hundred-yard limitis set again, or until heart and lungs fail. Different animals havedifferent flight distances and they gauge2 them in different ways.
Cats look, deer listen, bears smell. Giraffes will allow you tocome to within thirty yards of them if you are in a motor car,but will run if you are 150 yards away on foot. Fiddler crabsscurry when you're ten yards away; howler monkeys stir intheir branches when you're at twenty; African buffaloes3 react atseventy-five.
Our tools for diminishing flight distance are the knowledgewe have of an animal, the food and shelter we provide, theprotection we afford. When it works, the result is anemotionally stable, stress-free wild animal that not only staysput, but is healthy, lives a very long time, eats without fuss,behaves and socializes in natural ways and – the best sign –reproduces. I won't say that our zoo compared to the zoos ofSan Diego or Toronto or Berlin or Singapore, but you can'tkeep a good zookeeper down. Father was a natural. He madeup for a lack of formal training with an intuitive gift and akeen eye. He had a knack4 for looking at an animal andguessing what was on its mind. He was attentive5 to hischarges, and they, in return, multiplied, some to excess.
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1 flamingo | |
n.红鹳,火烈鸟 | |
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2 gauge | |
v.精确计量;估计;n.标准度量;计量器 | |
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3 buffaloes | |
n.水牛(分非洲水牛和亚洲水牛两种)( buffalo的名词复数 );(南非或北美的)野牛;威胁;恐吓 | |
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4 knack | |
n.诀窍,做事情的灵巧的,便利的方法 | |
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5 attentive | |
adj.注意的,专心的;关心(别人)的,殷勤的 | |
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