By Brian Rafferty
My wife Christine would like me to make an appeal to the city and state decision-makers who will ultimately determine if the Queens Zoo and the Prospect Park Zoo remain open.
“What’s wrong with you?” she wonders.
Let me give you a little background.
After years of working as a manager for a series of retail art galleries, Christine is now doing something that millions of women around the world choose to do every day. Rather than find a way to balance my career, hers and our daughter’s upbringing, Christine, who could probably make more money than I do, is no longer working for anybody but our family.
I refuse to say that she is a stay-at-home mom, because she would challenge me on that. One of the last things she does in her magnificent role of raising our daughter is stay at home. Heck, that’s the reason she isn’t holding down some other job in the first place.
Before I came to the TimesLedger 18 months ago, I had worked for a while in advertising and Christine worked at a gallery in SoHo. When my company’s Internet-based client stopped paying its bills, there went the business. We let go of our full-time day-care provider who had been coming into our home to take care of our daughter, Emma. We moved to Queens (where we were both from originally), she left her job and I eventually came to work here.
We made our choices for a number of reasons, but these are the key ones:
1.) Without one of us at home, Emma was lacking cultural involvement. She wasn’t going to zoos, museums, the aquarium, on trips — none of it. Our day-care provider would take her to the park, but that was about it. Emma needed her horizons to be broadened.
2.) We knew that with my job we would have every weekend together as a family — something we had not had since Emma was born.
So I came to work here and Christine “stayed home” with Emma.
In the last 18 months we have purchased or been given memberships to the New York Hall of Science and the Wildlife Conservation Society (which includes all the city zoos and the aquarium).
On days that she doesn’t have dance class, Emma has been taken to every zoo in New York City, the New York Aquarium, the New York Hall of Science, the Queens Library’s Maspeth branch, the Long Island Children’s Museum, the Staten Island Children’s Museum, Old Bethpage, a slew of city parks and so many other local, city and state attractions that to list them all in one page would make your head explode.
But the truth is, it’s not always easy to take her to some places. We are a one-car family who lives in Maspeth. Taking a 3-year-old (almost 4) on several legs of public transportation because I have the car for the day is tough on both Christine and Emma.
One of the best things, however, has been that the Q58 bus runs from near our house, down Grand Avenue and within a couple of blocks of Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
There, Emma gets to play in the park, explore in the New York Hall of Science, see the spectacle bears at the Queens Zoo, run around the Unisphere or take in an exhibit at the Queens Museum of Art. She’ll be learning how to ice skate this winter — another activity at the park.
I’m sure you can see where I am going with this by now.
Not only is the bus fare higher, and not only will Emma soon have to pay her own way to ride the bus, but there may soon be at least one place in Queens to cross off the list of family-friendly places to take our daughter.
From the ducks and drakes at the entrance to the sea lions in the back to the elk, bison, lynx, puma and vultures in between, Emma loves the Queens Zoo. And I know she is not alone.
Last Thursday I took Emma and Christine to a press preview of the brain exhibit at the New York Hall of Science. We wandered the exhibit and then Emma was able to play in the newly expanded science playground. I had to go to work, but Christine and Emma stayed in the park and went to the Queens Zoo, later taking the bus home. Emma said Thursday night that it was her “most favorite day ever.”
As an aside, let me mention that one of the most popular television shows for kids Emma’s age is “Stanley,” which airs on the Disney Channel. Stanley is a 6-year-old boy who has a cat, dog and goldfish, and his Great Big Book of Everything. He learns life lessons about sharing, recycling, getting enough rest and so on by discussing a problem with his goldfish and then leaping into his book to see how the animals handle his particular problem du jour.
The show is co-sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society, and Stanley is featured in the WCS monthly publication “The Great Outdoors,” to which Emma has a subscription.
It appears that more so than ever before little kids are growing enamored of animals and their interest in them is rising.
And who is the zoo really for, anyway? The parents? No. Teenagers? Not really. Little kids with huge imaginations and a desire to learn? You bet.
And so now our esteemed politicians, in an effort to save a few bucks, want to take away a venue for our borough’s young children to learn about animals, nature and the environment. Christine will not be able to take Emma to the Bronx Zoo — a similar problem, I am sure, facing many parents who currently find a second home at the Queens Zoo.
I am not sure how the politicians figured this one made good financial sense.
Tell me, which is it you prefer, Mr. & Ms. elected official, the actual act of depriving children of an educational and entertaining opportunity that could blossom into a lifelong love for nature, or is it just because you look forward to hearing the sound of little kids crying when their parents tell them that they won’t be able to go to the zoo anymore?
This, of course, leads me to a final question: What’s wrong with you?
