Phil died about 50 years ago

Phil was the 550 pound star attraction of the St. Louis, MO Zoo for several of the 17 years he spent there. I remember him very well, a normally quiet big old silverback that was the strongest looking animal you could imagine. I don't believe the enormous tree trunk with stubby thick limbs that stood in his cage was real but there was a long log chain tied in it with a truck tire on the loose end. Phil could drag that tire around with one finger or throw it so hard you' think the chain would snap in two. Phil had about the most humane cage on the place besides the giant walk-through bird cage but still it was a stark concrete floor and steel bars. Since seeing it as a small child I can't get the housing of the big cats out of my mind. Small barred cages of ceramic tile with concrete floors and a small shelf about 4 feet up on one wall. The poor animals were either lethargically lounging on the stark wood shelf or incessantly pacing the short narrow concrete floor. I'm just happy that children of today get to see contented animals with plenty of room to roam around in and not be simply prisioners on display. One oddity they had there was a black leopard that was shiny coal black but when the light was on him the right way you could see that he was spotted like any normal leopard except he was still solid black.

I just now noticed how much the artist humanized Phil's face in bronze. Look at the first two pictures closely, the arrangement of his nose, shape of forehead, and forehead hair line are changed in the extreme.

Out here we had Bobo at the Woodland Park Zoo for a large number of years.

I grew up in StLouis and remember seeing Phil a few times when I was a small child. To me he was King Kong and simply magnificent.

Years ago there was a silver fox in the Birmingham, Al. zoo that paced at all times, I felt for him and many times a week I would visit him and give him a treat...after some time he could reconize me approaching and his movements became calm, I always thought I was a comfort to him but later in life I came to relize how much of a comfort he was to me, as I have reflected on him many times as life goes by.

I remember going to the Atlanta zoo nearly 40 years ago and seeing this bigger than life gorilla behind bars in a relatively small enclosure - like he'd committed a crime or something. I thought that was a damned sorry way to treat one of our closest relatives.... :(