Little Black is sick.
Luo Yingjiu pushed a worn-out bicycle through the traffic flow of the eight o'clock morning rush hour, with ten steamed buns and a fish hanging from the handlebars, and a sack of brown rice skin for the goats to eat in the back basket.
Passing by a pharmacy, Lao Luo leaned the car against a large tree in the doorway, walked in and asked the pharmacist inside: "Is there any medicine for deworming in the dog's body?" ”
"Please wear a mask first." The staff said.
"Oh, no masks."
Luo Yingjiu, who bought medicine at the pharmacy
"It's okay, give you a new one." The staff said to give him a brand new mask, and then found several boxes of symptomatic medicines for him.
After getting the medicine to settle the bill, Luo Yingjiu remembered that the money for the mask had not yet been paid: "How much is the mask?" ”
"It's okay, masks don't cost money." The staff said.
Lao Luo did not speak, took out a dollar and put it on the counter, walked out of the pharmacy and pushed the bicycle to continue walking forward. After walking nearly three kilometers, I finally returned to the zoo, hurriedly fed the medicine to the little black, and then cleaned the cage, fed, and cleaned the yard. At exactly ten o'clock, Lao Luo sat down at the entrance of the zoo on time and began to greet today's tourists.
Luo Yingjiu, pushing the bicycle, facing the sun
For 32 years, starting in 1989, Luo Yingjiu has repeated the above process every morning. He is the director of the Phoenix Mountain Forest Park Zoo in Enshi Prefecture, and is also a keeper, cleaner, veterinarian, conductor, docent... All the work of this zoo requires Luo Yingjiu, who is over eighty years old, to personally experience it, from the life and death of animals to the small mask, all of which are self-responsible.
He gave animals a home
Animals also give him a home
Xiao Hei is a pastoral dog, who began to be spiritless a few days ago, and his mouth is still constantly glowing with white foam. Based on experience, Luo Yingjiu concluded that the puppy had roundworms in its stomach, so on the way to buy feed in the morning, he detoured to the pharmacy to buy insect repellent for Xiao Hei.
There are five or six small dogs like Xiao Hei in Lao Luo's zoo, and large dogs such as Tibetan Mastiffs and Caucasus are kept in iron cages for tourists to visit. In addition to cats and dogs, there are monkeys who are blind in this zoo, black bears with only three bear claws left, peacocks who can listen to people's commands to open the screen... The food that every animal likes to eat and the diseases that are easy to grow, Lao Luo keeps in mind.
Most of the animals here have a miserable past, and Luo Yingjiu's fate with them stems from a "chance encounter" with a porcupine.
Luo Yingjiu
After retiring from the army in 1975, Lao Luo accidentally saw a porcupine hanging in mid-air in the street market, with its legs broken and wailing.
"If a person is hanged like this, won't he be hanged?" The more Lao Luo looked at it, the more sympathetic he became, so he bargained with the shopkeeper while touching his whole body and making up 14 yuan to buy the porcupine.
And this 14 yuan is one-fifth of his salary that year.
Since then, the crippled, trafficked, and abandoned animals have begun to make their home in Luo Yingjiu. In 1978, Lao Luo adopted more and more animals, and he began to subsidize expenditure by exhibiting animals. In 1989, the local government raised funds from the society and adopted the form of "private official assistance" to support Lao Luo to establish the Phoenix Mountain Forest Park Zoo. Since then, enshi's first zoo has begun to welcome visitors.
Elderly monkeys in a zoo
In the most conspicuous part of the zoo there is an iron cage with an old monkey living in it, not jumping around like other monkeys, but just sitting quietly in the middle of the cage.
"This monkey has been here for 28 years, and if you count the age of an adult, you should be in your eighties." The monkey was raised by an old friend, and later because the friend was old and could not take care of it, Lao Luo bought it with 200 yuan.
Every morning when Lao Luo went to the market, he had to buy the old monkey his favorite white-faced steamed bun: "Its eyes have gone blind, and the steamed bun must be delivered to his hand to be touched." ”
Luo Yingjiu fed the white fox Qiu Qiu
Behind the blue-and-white fence, a touch of flexible white faded from time to time, and when it saw people approaching, it also ran enthusiastically to lie on the edge of the cage. It turned out to be a small snowy mountain fox.
"This snowy mountain fox was given to me by a comrade of a nearby construction team," Lao Luo approached it, and the white fox began to pick the door enthusiastically, "He is a native of Yichang, and he worked in the construction team at Enshi Pine Tree Plain for the past two years, and he didn't have time to take care of the animals, so he gave it to me." ”
This white fox came to the zoo in autumn, and Lao Luo gave it a name called "Autumn Autumn".
"Autumn and autumn come, come to autumn and autumn, stand up, stand up." Lao Luo called out to the white fox, and the white fox also responded enthusiastically to Lao Luo.
Luo Yingjiu, pushing forward with a load of feed and food
Despite the long distance, he spent 32 years in the morning pushing his bicycle to buy fodder; he sat for 32 years in spite of his age, bending over to clean the broom for the animals; although there were few tourists, the chairs at the ticket office at the entrance of the zoo, he sat for 32 years...
He gave the animals a home, and the animals also gave Luo Yingjiu a home with the company of a lifetime.
From a family to a person
From Munjeru City to Menkoro Sparrow
From the wind and rain bridge along the river, after passing through the tunnel, turn left, you can see the iron gate of enshi Phoenix Mountain Forest Park Zoo at a glance. During the day, Luo Yingjiu sat behind the table in the doorway, with white hair and shoulders, and an old dragon clock.
The main entrance of the Phoenix Mountain Forest Park Zoo
Lao Luo still remembers that more than thirty years ago, on the day the zoo first opened, a total of more than 130 tourists came, and the single ticket money in one afternoon was more than 50 yuan. This was indeed a lot of income for Lao Luo, whose salary was only more than 40 yuan at the time, and the health care and feed costs of animals should be affordable.
The park is booming, and my daughter also came to help. The father takes care of the animals, the daughter sells tickets, and the father and daughter work together to make the zoo lively.
Luo Yingjiu once thought that he would work with his daughter to make the zoo bigger and stronger.
However, his daughter, who suffered from congenital heart disease, left him forever in 2007.
Luo Yingjiu's words from his daughter have always been remembered in his heart: "Daddy, this zoo, you don't want to bring it down." Over time, he translated this sentence into a larger ideal: the citizens of Enshi need to have a zoo, even if they are alone, they must insist on opening the zoo.
Luo Yingjiu carried the feed up the steps
Over the past 30 years, Enshi Urban Area has developed rapidly, with new high-rise buildings rising from the surrounding areas, and Phoenix Mountain has changed from a desolate mountain to a beautiful forest park. The playground that was originally opposite the zoo has been demolished and rebuilt, and there are more leisure and entertainment places in the city, which is not the preferred choice for citizens when playing.
The world outside is getting better and better, making the old zoo more and more out of place.
In 2002, in order to meet the needs of tourists, the zoo added lions and tigers, and the ticket price rose to 20 yuan, and the income barely supported feeding large animals. Later, the ticket was reduced to 10 yuan, and only a few tickets could be sold a day.
Today, the zoo's entrance fees earn up to more than 1,000 yuan per month, which is far from enough to take care of and feed the animals. Lao Luo's monthly retirement salary of more than 4,000 yuan was almost all used to feed the animals.
"At any time, I don't make up my mind on animals." Even in the stage when his daughter was seriously ill, Lao Luo did not consider taking animals to sell for money, "Animals are also a life, it is not easy to save them, you can't just see the immediate benefits, you have to see the preciousness of animal life." ”
Luo Yingjiu and his animals
It is the loneliest zoo
It is also the warmest zoo
"May I ask, are you gay or lesbian?"
Luo Yingjiu has long white hair, which causes many new visitors to the zoo to assume that he is a "lesbian" at first glance. At first, Lao Luo would argue a few words, and then he slowly stopped thinking about other people's eyes.
It's not that he doesn't trim the edges, when he was young, Lao Luo was also a handsome guy who paid attention to appearance, but he found in the days of taking care of the animals that every time he got a haircut, it seemed that the animals didn't know him, and it took several days to establish a relationship again.
Thinking about it, Lao Luo realized that it was a hair problem, and immediately decided not to cut his hair short.
"It's good to keep your hair very hygienic, but you can't just obey your personal preferences, you have to obey the wishes of the animals."
Shoulder-length white hair, so that Lao Luo in the vicinity gradually has a "famous", his persistence, but also spread on the Internet, many tourists came to Phoenix Mountain, just to buy a ticket, support Lao Luo to continue his persistence.
"He did everything alone, and he felt like he wanted to help him." "Seeing that there are only ten dollars in tickets here, I thought of helping such an old man more." "This zoo is not easy, so I came here to see it."
Various video websites, forums, there are also many netizens spontaneously for Luo Yingjiu to promote, and through various ways to raise donations for him, to help him tide over the difficulties, continue to persevere.
Luo Yingjiu who cleans the cage
In Luo Yingjiu's view, all this he did stemmed from the sentence said by the regiment commander when he was discharged from the army: "You are a good soldier and a good cadre in the army, and when you return to the locality, you must do one thing for the local people." ”
In the eyes of netizens, Luo Yingjiu did all this in his own perseverance and sense of responsibility for animals.
In the eyes of the animals, Lao Luo did all this, like the big parents of the whole park, full of love and concern.
Although lonely and poor, this zoo also carries the warmth and hope of surviving strongly.
"I think that people, in their lifetime, will be like the character of a leopard, and when they encounter difficulties, they will fight to the death."
For the future of the zoo, the elderly Luo has been powerless to dominate, but after taking care of animals for so many years, the animal That Luo Yingjiu wants to become most is a leopard, taking care of and protecting his own animals in his lifetime, at the zoo gate, until the end of his life.