![]() ![]() Life in captivity can also diminish animals’ immune system, not to mention their morale. Breeding arrangements span a global network of zoos, but gene pools remain limited, making some of the animals vulnerable to genetic disease. In accredited zoos today, most are bred from existing captives. We don’t know exactly what lured him to the level path that runs along the back of the Bird House, although given that he hails from a multimillion-year hunting tradition, it may have been his well-honed sense for easy prey.ĭuring the 20th century, most zoo animals were plucked roughly from biomes across the planet until eventually a distaste for these abductions settled in among the public. T he fox seems to have entered the zoo by slinking up a wooded hillside on its southern edge, his white-tipped tail bobbing behind him like a wind sock. Even foxes are welcome to roam the grounds, subject to certain limitations, which are strictly enforced: If, for instance, a fox indulges his darker vulpine impulses and hunts the zoo’s animals, he will swiftly be brought to justice. One curator told me that juvenile bears have recently been spotted in Rock Creek Park and that she wouldn’t be surprised if she soon sees one strolling down the zoo’s central path. Raccoons that fish ice cream from the trash are likewise tolerated. If officers from the zoo’s dedicated federal law-enforcement agency spot a white-tailed deer on a control-room monitor, they do not express alarm. “If you’re not careful, someone will come in and smack an elephant on the rear end and run.” Otherwise, the borders between the forest and zoo are as porous as possible, so as not to interrupt the wildlife corridors that crisscross D.C. “Guests do stupid stuff,” one staffer told me. The zoo’s perimeter fence may be 8 feet tall and topped by barbed wire, but that’s mainly to keep people out at night. Senior staff at the zoo told me that they try to respect the layered local ecology, which includes the larger park and the surrounding concrete expanse of the capital. Changes like these have proved soothing for visitors, but the animals remain confined in spaces that constitute a tiny fraction of their natural range. These enclosures have been refreshed since the zoo opened in 1891: Steel bars have been replaced with moats, stone walls, and other naturalistic barriers to deemphasize the aesthetics of the cage. Spread across the zoo’s grounds are more than 100 enclosures where bamboo-bingeing pandas, neon tree frogs, and all manner of other creatures are held for the viewing pleasure of visitors. ![]() But by last May, the city was again thrumming with traffic, increasing the appeal of hunting targets within the park, especially its ultimate garden of forbidden treats: the Smithsonian National Zoo. This noise had quieted during the pandemic, when D.C.’s mayor closed restaurants and human life drained out of downtown. With his swiveling ears, he would have heard cars whooshing down nearby streets. It’s not clear whether the fox had his final destination in mind as he moved through dense stands of sugar maples, oaks, and beeches under the light of a crescent moon. Only recently had the park’s kits ventured toward the mouths of their little caves, to flop around with their siblings and play tug-of-war with bones while awaiting their fathers’ return from the hunt. When litters are born, in late March or early April, the kits remain in their depths for nine days, curled up nose to tail, eyes closed serenely. In springtime, the hills of Rock Creek Park are alive with these renovated dens. After mating, pairs move in together to raise kits, usually by expanding a burrow abandoned by a woodchuck or skunk. The cold months are cuffing season for foxes. That it was early May indicates that the fox was likely a new father, a detail that has gone unmentioned in published accounts of his crime. He pressed his paws into exposed soil, indenting it with diamond-shaped prints that grew farther apart as he accelerated into a trot. At the woodland’s edge, he could see the glow of Washington, D.C. With exquisite night vision, the fox surveyed the contours of the park’s forests and the curves in its stream. R ock Creek Park was still dark when the killer emerged from his den, a flame-colored phantom on black-stocking legs. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. To hear more audio stories, download the Hark app.
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