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Annabellisle, the lonely wolverine: 1914

June 15, 2011 in Best of THE NIGHT TRAIN, History | 3 comments

This totally broke my heart:

wolverine

An article in the Detroit Free Press dated January 25, 1914 tells the sad tale of Annabellisle, believed to be the first wolverine in Michigan. Due to its reputation as “the wolverine state” (perhaps a slur invented by piqued Ohioans during the Toledo War), the Belle Isle Zoo thought it only proper that a wolverine should be on view. But the first one they tried to acquire died in transit from Siberia, and Annabellisle, on her arrival from Alaska, was in a bad state: she was listless, skinny, and wouldn’t eat — and wolverines eat everything!

I’m sure the situation would have been better had the “Office Naturalist” not been so openly contemptuous toward the animal. The Free Press reported that he called the wolverine “absolutely the lowest form of animal organism,” calling the creature “cunning, rapacious,” and preoccupied with robbing bait from animal traps. The skunk, the naturalist said, shone by comparison. He “declare[d] openly that it will be a good thing for the zoo if Annabellisle passes beyond.”

Annabellisle couldn’t even catch a break with her zoo companions.

“The other animals at the zoo distrust her and, it is said, won’t feel keenly if she dies,” the Free Press reported.

The Naturalist guessed that Annabellisle was refusing her food because she was upset with her corny name.

But the intrepid zoo reporter guessed differently.

“Perhaps it is loneliness,” he surmised.

Perhaps, indeed. Perhaps.

Poor Annabellisle. Also, let’s agree: totally stupid name.

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Monkeyshines

June 17, 2010 in History | 2 comments

As if a fancifully written news report about escaped monkeys on Belle Isle weren’t adorable enough, a police inspector’s six-year-old daughter had to get involved.

June 28, 1938

Escaped Belle Isle Monkeys Make Picnic an Adventure
Snatch Sandwiches from Hands of Visitors, but Shun Banana Bait in Traps

Night fell over Belle Isle Monday, and the timid might have fancied that they heard the dread drums of the gorilla dance, deep in the jungle.

Less fanciful persons, however, waited beside banana baited traps and hurled unmentionable names upwards into the trees, where escaped monkeys sat secure and chattered back.

Earlier in the day picnic takers thought that they had wandered by mistake into a Dorothy Lamour movie set. The monkeys swung down out of trees, grabbed all the loose sandwiches in sight and scampered to safety. The marauders were small, tan rhesus monkeys of the kind known chiefly as pets.

Most disturbed by these — well, monkeyshines — was Curator John W. Ireland, who began by declaring that “people would get suspicious” if newspapers printed stories saying the monkeys were at large. At a late hour Monday night, after a day of excursions and alarums, Curator Ireland was mad at everybody, most of all the monkeys.

The picnickers, as far as complaints at the Belle Isle police station indicated, were the placid, genial kind who thought it mildly amusing to have their lunches disappear.

Inspector Millard Brown threw out a police dragnet for monkeys Monday when his six-year-old cousin, Lela Brown, had sugar taken from her hand by one of them as she went to feed the bears in the park.

… Ireland said that the monkeys had escaped through a hole in a cage into which they were put while their regular cage was being painted. He insisted that most of them had returned voluntarily. Other attendants said the monkeys came from monkey mountain, a stone hillock surrounded by water, and that they swung out on a rope left by a careless workman.

God damn, guys. MONKEY MOUNTAIN.

More kooky Belle Isle Zoo news to come.

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Chaos! At the Belle Isle Zoo, 1940

June 15, 2010 in History | 2 comments

(Bear pit at the Belle Isle Zoo. 1910s? Thanks, Library of Congress!)

This week we have a little trove of quirky, adorable, mayhem-documenting newspaper stories for you, all about the Belle Isle Zoo. The Belle Isle Zoo opened in 1895 with a few deer and a bear.

And then! (Okay, we’re distilling here.) In 1940, just a year before control of the Belle Isle Zoo was ceded to the Detroit Zoological Society, something terrible happened.

Another Clawed by Belle Isle Bear

When Paul Langelle, 35 years old, climbed over the low railing around the black bears’ den Friday afternoon at the Belle Isle Zoo, in order to feed one of the bears peanuts, he apparently forgot that the bears sometimes grab for both fingers and peanuts.

The bear reached with his paw for the peanuts and so doing scratched the index finger of Langelle’s right hand.

It was the third time this summer that visitors at the Belle Isle Zoo have been mauled or scratched by the bears because they refused to stay outside the safety railing.

Paul Langelle was treated with antitoxin and we assume he recovered fully from the scratch on his hand.

When the Detroit Zoo opened in Royal Oak in 1928, it was one of the first modern zoos to landscape “natural habitats” for its animal inhabitants, rather than enclose them in cages. It allowed the animals to roam more freely, and although it seemed like nothing was separating the visitor from the majestic and dangerous creatures, it actually kept them at a greater distance and prevented the reaching-through-the-bars-to-feed-them-peanuts phenomenon that inevitably caused problems. Because people are idiots. So the Zoological Society did the animals and human kind a favor with that move. Right?

I’ll be sharing a few more stories like this throughout the week, with thanks to Dan of Buildings of Detroit for passing them along to me. May you venture over to his website and read his rigorous journalism fondly and frequently.  Oh, and he has a book coming out this summer, and we’re pretty much losing it with excitement.

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