Tag Archives: Jacksonville Zoo

The Tortuous Tale of Tarzan and Darlyn on Trout River

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When Darlyn Finch Kuhn was eight years old, her brother spotted the monkey on a fencepost by the side of the road. Bringing Tarzan into the family for two years was a wild experience. Where did he come from? (And where did he go?) How do we contextualize Tarzan amongst urban legends of the Riverside monkeys and Monkey Farm and Silver Springs escapees or the thousands of monkeys who’ve called Florida home?

Jax Zoo (For Harry Crews, Jiggs and Gandai)

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In Harry Crews’s 1992 novel Scar Lover, the Jax Zoo becomes the scene of Southern Gothic anti-epiphany. For years, descriptions of the zoo in the news sounded hardly more pathetic than in Crews. If what happened to Jiggs seems unforgiveable, maybe, hopefully, the baby gorilla named Gandai can offer us all redemption.