Yesterday's newspaper had an article about the carnivores in Vandalur zoo rejecting the meat served to them because it was stale. I don't blame them - who wants to eat stale food anyway ?
For those that don't know, Vandalur zoo in Chennai is one of the best zoos in India. Unlike other zoos where you have the animals in cages, here they are housed in open areas. Ofcourse they have moats and high fences to keep them restricted to their area.
If you are in Chennai and want to have a day's worth of quality time, don't look further than the Vandalur zoo. It is an amazing experience as I have experienced a few times. Ofcourse, make sure you have a full day at your disposal, because this place is spread over many acres and to have a dekko at all the animals/birds/reptiles, it takes you close to a day.
Coming back to the stale food problem, it seems the zoo authorities have contracted out the supply of meat to some contractor who occasionally tries to pass on stale meat to be given to the animals in the zoo. As per norms, there should be someone in the zoo, who should monitor the quality of the food procured. But, looks like this simple technicality gets overlooked every now and then. Actually, always gets overlooked.
So, the poor animals (lions, tigers, Siberian white tigers etc) are thrown stale meat, which they understandably reject. The newspaper goes to the top honcho at the zoo who is supposed to manage the zoo overall and bring this to his notice.
His response is "I have not heard of such a problem in the zoo. And have not got any complaints in this regard."
What does he expect to happen ? Ofcourse no human involved in the procurement process would complain. The only parties to complain would be the tigers and the lions. Does he expect the lions and tigers to write out their grievance on A4 sheet paper, sign it and present it to him ?
