Janey likes to see what's inside. Sit quietly on the ledge and open your bag. Rifle around a bit like you've lost your keys, find them, take them out, change your mind and look again. Maybe take out some Chapstick and put it on. In a moment, Janey will come to see.

Try to be aware of the humans who crowd around as simply other creatures, odd squawky ones maybe. "I DON'T LIKE HIS FACE" a boy announces, "I WANT TO CUT OFF THAT FACE AND USE MY FACE. THEN I'D LIKE IT!" A man in his twenties makes "ooo ooo ooo" sounds and scratches his armpits. Gently touch the arm of the French lady who's pounding on the glass, look into her eyes without judgment, shake your head "no". Smile when she stops and say "hello Janey" to the brown eyes watching through the glass.

It's tough to say what Janey is going to like, and presentation counts. Pens are nice. Pull the cap off slowly, like it might explode . Marvel at the tip, show it to her. If it's a ball point, click it a couple of times. Write a little on your palm. Touch the tip to the glass. When she starts to look past you into the bag, it's time to move on.

Janey used to live with the Vegas singer, Tom Jones. It's not unusual..or maybe it is. As the story goes she was with him for 20 years and landed in the San Diego zoo on some sort of immigration issue. That was 20 years ago, and might account for her interest in humans and our vanities.

In her eyes you find unexpected warmth, a maternal gentleness, a flicker of amusement. When one of her fellow orangutans gave birth in the middle of the night, Janey acted as midwife. Her own birth was in the Borneo forest. Does Janey recall her mother's death as we file past the glass? Probably not, or perhaps only in shadowy dreams. A smell, a scream, falling, crushed leaves.

It wasn't her mother who turned Janey on to makeup. Go slow, let the drama build. Pull out the makeup case. Unzip it with the careful anticipation of Carter at Tut's tomb. Show her the wonderful things inside. Uncap the lipstick and roll it all the way up. Adjust it, put it on, dab it on the glass. Open the compact, but hold it obliquely so the mirror doesn't confront Janey with an alarming orangutan face on the freedom side of the glass. Powder your nose, powder your wrist. Put on a little perfume or lotion if you have it. Pull out the Stila brush, the copper one with the retractable tube that keeps the bristles from crushing when you put the cap on. Notice that Janey is making little unconscious grasping movements with her hand, just like you did when the sales lady demonstrated it. The top pulls off, the tube slides slowly down, revealing the brush like a magician's flower, and ... Janey is looking away. Her face a mask, her eyes focus on some distant point. Whisper "I'm sorry, Janey." Consider tossing the treasure over the enclosure wall. Visualize five apes fighting. Imagine an unfortunate X-ray. Remember that Shamu died from a ice cream stick lodged in his throat. Slowly put your things back in the bag.

My friend says in Vancouver they closed all the zoos - decreeing that no animal should have to live in captivity like that. He's pretty self-righteous about it, but he's also never been to a zoo before. I point out that some of these animals don't have a place anymore outside of captivity. I remember to him the lovely pastel antelope from Afghanistan we saw earlier. Besides, I say, look at the faces of the human children here. If this zoo makes the animals more than an abstraction to them - if even one of the kids here today grows up to fight for habitat protection... My voice trails off and I realize I don't believe in a solution anymore.

In my family we call it the "30 mile a minute" segment. That's the part of nature show where the narrator explains that the forest you've been watching is receding as fast as a burning sheet of paper. Our ever expanding species needs more land, more wood, more water, more food. It's pretty much them or us, isn't it? Even eco-tourism is our attempt to turn their forests and savanna into something useful for us..the lions and cheetahs can stay, but the scary hunting dogs are bad for business...

If it's hard to do something about a tragedy, it's even harder to stay conscious in the face of one where there's no relieving action you can take. In ways I can't articulate to my friend, I understand that this reaches the soul. The best argument for this zoo the possibility it holds for bearing witness. Sit. Notice. Breathe.

Janey has come back to the window and places her hand on the glass where my shoulder rests. Janey likes to see what's inside.