"Racism, dead penguins and retaliation: Why the Vilas Zoo lost its only Black zookeepers."

That's the headline for a Madison.com article about the zoo here in Madison. You might think racism is somehow killing penguins — those birds who might seem to embody the peaceful harmonization of black and white.

There were 2 black zookeepers, and each left to take a job at a zoo in another city. But their exit interviews contained some criticisms, including some things about the treatment of animals, most notably the decapitation death of a penguin. Who would decapitate a penguin?! A raccoon. Wild local raccoons take the liberty to come and go as they please, including slipping into the enclosures of captive animals. 

We're told that, according to an exit interview, the zoo's general curator, Beth Petersen "decided to stop trapping raccoons that got onto zoo property and instead put Epsom salts on the ground in an attempt to repel them." At least one raccoon was insufficiently repelled, got into the penguin exhibit, and bit the head off Alice, the "elderly African penguin."

Petersen then, it was said in the interview, switched back to trapping, but the trapped raccoons tried to dig out of the traps and ended up with torn up hands and had to be euthanized.  

Other African penguins died too: one from a fungus infection and others "from capture myopathy, an often fatal disease for animals in captivity caused by overexertion and handling." With too few penguins for "a successful penguin colony," the zoo used "stuffed animals and mirrors to make them think that they are in a larger colony." Again, that's the assertion in the exit interview. 

Moreover: "A capybara named Shrek jumped into a drained pool while it was sedated, breaking its legs.... A hornbill was introduced into a meerkat exhibit and was later found dead and partially eaten by the meerkats. A young seal named Lucille had a common intestinal issue, yet died within a week after Peterson declined to take the animal to the vet. Two green aracaris, a species of toucan, drowned after being introduced to an exhibit with an aquarium."

Perhaps this is a normal or even exemplary record for a zoo. I don't know. But where's the racism? The 2 black zookeepers both asserted that racism drove them away. One of them said she's "been the victim of many microaggressions" and has "witnessed racism." But neither interviewee specified the instances of purported racism. There's also this:

[O]ther documents show [complaints] to county officials... that [Joseph] Darcangelo, the zoo’s deputy director, was accused by other zoo staff of referring to a Chinese restaurant in February 2020 as “Ching-a-Ling’s” and said it served “Ching-Chong” food....