Zoo Review

Once upon a time, a Ralph and Elizabeth Space bought ¼ acre of land and opened a modest general store and repair shop in Sussex, New Jersey.

When the Great Depression hit, and families couldn’t pay for necessities from the store, they would barter with family heirlooms, which included toys of all varieties, now collected in a shed-like museum, surely inhabited by the ghost of Vincent Price.

Their lives were to change forever the day Ralph bought home a New Jersey cougar, put it in a cage, and the Space’s began charging admission. Flash forward 72 years to 2009, and you have over 400 acres of the largest, privately owned wild animal kingdom you can imagine. Upon entering, you’re instantly greeted by Goliath, who, when alive, was the largest Kodiac Bear in America, standing 12 feet and weighing in at over 400 pounds!!!

The walls are neck-to-neck wild beasts: bison, moose, elk. Anything unspeakably large and taxidermy ready.

There’s even a plaque with proudly states that all of the animals were captured by the Space Farms family themselves.

After scanning the collection of cobras and rattlesnakes in the lobby, and older gentleman—looking a bit like the ghost of Space Farms himself!—opens the door to an unbelievable expansion of animals. The turkeys and chickens run free, and strangely, share a pen with a black panther, who paces his cake and, once in a while, futilely spies some nearby poultry and licks his chops.

The animals are all encaged, and at times (as with the panther), rather strangely. But it’s this strange arrangement that brings a fiery fascination and makes one want to job from pen to pen. I have three favorite animal experiences, and the first was definitely the peacock, trying with all his might to woo a could-not-be-less-interested peahen. He’d fluff his feathers whenever she was around, and make an attempt to impress her by forcing them to vibrate fervently. Usually she would just walk away, distracted by corn and dirt, but I thought it was pretty cool.

The second was the new Kodiacs, not anywhere near threatening to steal Goliath’s 400 pound title away, but still so utterly enormous that he could just barely handle his own hind legs when he walked.

I’d passed a goose, who’d decided to make a nest just off the side of the road (very poor planning, but determined to keep her little chicks warm and safe with plenty of hissing!), a pregnant kangaroo (indicated by a handwritten sign not to scare her – because she was expecting), sleeping lions and tigers, plenty of deer, caribou, and a heartbreakingly forlorn monkey.

But I think my favorites of all were the lemurs, who were such a bizarre fusion of human and feline characteristics. They were very sweet and calm, and yet slithered in and out of the tree branches with such ease. Right away they attempted to call attention to the machine on the other side of where we first met, the one where, for a quarter, you can buy corn to throw through the chain link, which they would, with discrepancy, pick and choose their favorite kernels.

One the way out you can’t help but notice the one room schoolhouse, no bigger than a garden shed.

There’s no entry allowed, but peering through the window one can see a shadow box of days of old, complete with lessons still on the chalk board, notepads on the desks, and an apple on the teacher’s pulpit. It’s nice to know the young ghosts of space farms are educated!

All in all, a unique and interesting way to spend a Tuesday afternoon, one I would highly recommend if not for its historical value, than for its surreal, David Lynch-esque wild animal experience.