The "Tales of Animals at Lancaster Zoo Show A Wild Side" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Just finished reading another one of Jack Brubaker's stories that are published weekly in the Lancaster Newspaper.  Story was titled "Tales of animals at Lancaster Zoo show a wild side."  I read and reread the story which follows.  See if you can imagine where Lancaster's Zoo was at one time.  

The Lancaster Zoo operated in the city's Reservoir Park from 1923 to 1932.  The city's Water Department took charge of the reservoir but was out of its depth with zoo operations.  The financial downturn during the Great Depression finished off the project.  Zoo stories are numerous.  Newspapers of the time are full of them.  Cynthia Roth, a diligent local researcher, wrote about the zoo in a piece on Reservoir Park that appeared in The Journal of Lancaster County's Historical Society in 2010.  Here's a feature that has not been emphasized and may be cause to send the children from the room.  

Catastrophes at the Zoo.  The zoo contained fish, turtles, frogs, rabbits, squirrels, foxes, black snakes, opossums and other relatively benign creatures, as well alligators, monkeys, a baboon and bears.  The alligators and bears made the most trouble.  And a buck deer went wild.  The alligators ate all the goldfish.  The bears, known as Mr. and Mrs Bear did not get along.  Two days after they were caged in the park, Mr. Bear slashed the throat of Mrs. Bear, killing her.  The Lancaster Intelligencer Journal claimed Mrs. Bear was at fault: She had been aggravating Mr. Bear all along.  A couple of years later, Charles McNutt, a Police officer who patrolled Reservoir Park, entered the bear cage.  Mr. Bear stood on his hind legs and took a swing at the officer, narrowly missing his face.  McNutt reportedly responded by punching Mr. Bear in the nose.  In the spring of 1929, a buck deer who'd been born in the wild attempted to kill its freshly born progeny, presumably while Mama Deer watched.  Zoo keepers shot the bad dad.  Frequently the call of the wild in its blood caused the animal to become restless and stubborn," explained the Lancaster New Era.  Despite all of the pleasure the zoo provided, especially for children, the city ended the sporadic mayhem at the facility on the last day of December 1932.  

Just over four decades later, in the spring of 1973, the petting zoo opened at the city's Long's Park.  What originally was known as the Mother Goose Farm continues to house goats, lambs and other relatively harmless "farm" animals.   No alligators. No bears.  No deadly deer.  No devouring and slashing and shooting.  OK, now you can call the kids back into the room.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.