For the first time more than 30 years, the Navajo Nation Zoo is not exhibiting snakes. As Arizona Public Radio’s Ryan Heinsius reports, zoo officials made the decision to relocate the animals because many Navajos view them with deep suspicion.
Snakes are seen as bad omens in traditional Navajo culture, and some tribal members even refuse to breathe the same air as the reptiles.
“We realized that this is not just a simple fear of snakes, this goes all the way up to a cultural issue,” says David Mikesic, a zoologist and the manager of the Navajo Nation Zoo.
The presence of a rattlesnake and two gopher snakes at the zoo’s Discovery Center caused many people to skip the exhibits all together. Mikesic says some parents and teachers had stopped allowing schoolchildren to visit the facility.
“It’s kind of a logical decision: If we have animal that prevents people from enjoying the rest of the building, the question is, ‘Why have it here?’ One of the easiest things we can do about it is to rehome them,” he says.
The snakes were initially brought to the zoo as rescue animals. They’ve been relocated to facilities in Utah and New York. An endangered black-footed ferret will move into the Navajo Zoo’s former snake enclosure after it’s renovated.
