Feb 122012
 

In spite of numerous signs prohibiting it, many people insist on feeding the animals. One man, his pockets filled with shelled peanuts, was trying to get the attention of a large male ibex. The goat was standing on a ridge of gunite where he could command a dominant view of the exhibit while remaining in the shade of the overhanging trees.

His perch was a good twenty feet from the public area, but just below the ridge was a prominent ledge onto which the man was lobbing peanuts. The goat, however, was completely ignoring the man and his offerings. Peanut after peanut landed on the ledge, only a few feet directly below the goat, but he never moved a muscle. The man was becoming more and more frustrated with each toss.

At this point a keeper happened to walk by and saw what was going on. Although he normally would have told the man to stop, in this case he simply laughed to himself and continued on, for he knew one thing that the visitor obviously didn’t: due to an injury a few years earlier, that ibex was totally blind in the eye that was facing out of the exhibit.

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