Letter from Prague Dieting with a gorilla
Many Czechs are fed up with the corruption scandals that constantly fill the evening news and morning papers and look elsewhere for diversion. And, as always, Prague’s zoo is happy to provide it. Its reality show Unmasking launched in 2005 made its troupe of gorillas overnight celebrities and household names and did much to highlight the plight of gorillas in the wild.
Shinda, photo: Khalil Baalbaki
Now the zoo is reaping the profits of this clever PR stunt. People know the
gorillas by name, they know who’s bossy, who’s a bully and who’s
having gorilla Richard’s baby. Now the spotlight is on 14-year-old
Shinda, a female gorilla who has been put on a diet with the aim of losing
16 kilos - something that many Czechs find it easy to relate to. Shinda is
as nervy and bad tempered as any person whose daily food ration has been
halved, getting up in the middle of the night to forage for food and trying
to nick something from her neighbours when their backs are turned. And her
keeper Marek Ždánský says she’s even tried malingering in the hope of
getting her favourite – now forbidden – fruits. In fact Shinda made
such a show of suffering under the vegetables-only diet that public
sympathy for her soared and turned against the keeper. People went on-line
to point out that Mr. Ždánský himself could do with a diet and the
keeper sportingly admitted that at 105 kilos he weighed just one kilo less
than Shinda. After taking a ribbing from the other keepers he agreed to
join Shinda on her diet and they are both aiming for the same target-weight
of ninety kilos - Shinda so that she can safely conceive, Ždánský so
that he would lose his beer belly. The vet’s orders thus launched a mini
reality show in which the zoo’s employees are said to be placing bets.
Both the gorilla and her keeper are now in the spotlight and will be
publicly weighed on the same pair of scales on November 30th to make sure
everything is above board. If they have achieved their target goal they
will each get a treat – Shinda two litres of her favourite fruit juice,
Ždánský five litres of champagne. But the real payback will be
Shinda’s growing tummy and Ždánský’s flat one.
