I am not a sentimentalist when it comes to animals. I used to hunt, and have no trouble eating meat killed by hunters, whether my brothers venison or the wild boar (cinghiale) one can find in northern Italian restaurants. (I did hesitate, however, when offered a tagliatelle al ragu dasino, the meat sauce was donkey-meat; but I finally tried it, and found it excellent, which prompted a niece to say, "Uncle Joe got a piece of *** while in Italy! But I digress.) Im not going to get weepy when it comes time to condemnone of ourchickens to the soup pot.But I went to the National Zoo yesterday, the first time in over twenty years, I guess, and I found myself feeling sorry for the animals. The first one we saw was a sloth bear which did nothing but pace up and down. (It reminded me of the last time I was at the Rome Zoo where I saw a magnificent tiger, four feet at the haunches, surely fifteen feet from nose to tip of the tail, pacing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth in his cage.) Some of the smaller mammals dug at the base of the windows that enclosed their cages. The big catsa tiger and a male and a female lionsimply lay inert at the tops of their enclosures. A silver-backed gorilla seemed dull, bored.I know that zoos do much good, and that there are some species which have been preserved only because of zoos, but still it was sad, and I dont know that Ill go back.