From Richard Reynolds #2

!cid_X_MA1_1295731057@aol, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. Richard Reynolds says - - This is a well known and widely circulated press photo of Gargantua from about 1939. Many blog readers will have seen it. My purpose in posting it is to call attention to the light fixtures recessed into the floor of the cage. We see one in the foreground and another beneath his hindquarters. Altogether there were three of these recessed lights on each side of the cage. They are shown to good effect in the recently posted photo from Dom Yodice showing the cage in the Garden in 1938. I believe the reason for the floor lights is that the air conditioning ductwork and vents were in the ceiling of the cage so that there was no room for recessed lighting up there. I have also seen it writ that the ceiling was not strongly built and could never have withstood a powerful upward thrust from the big guy, assuming he could reach it. But he never tried as far as I know. It is little realized that Gargantua and also Toto lived year round in their respective air conditioned cages, hers a near duplicate (1941) of his (1938). There was no gorilla building or exercise yard at Sarasota winter quarters into which they could be moved during the November to March layoff. There was talk of such in 1941 but our entry into World War II put the kibosh on that. Then in 1949 Mrs. Marie Hoyt, Toto's former owner and self appointed guardian, designed such a layout. It was never built. By then Concello was pinching the show's pennies. She does not seem to have offered to pay for it. From all I can glean, Mrs. Hoyt was a constant nag in the side of the show's top brass. Actually, these big air conditioned wagons were about the size of what many zoo gorillas had at the time. The zoo ones were often sterile and fronted with glass. Even today, zoo gorillas that enjoy huge outdoor yards for entire families of them spend their nights and during frigid weather (i.e. half their lives) indoors in off-exhibit cages that are really quite small. But, then, their natural inclination is to build nests for the nights, so a small cage makes no difference. In Gargantua's case he made a nest every night on the floor of his cage. He rolled up in a blanket and then tore it to shreds the next morning. The show went through a lot of blankets.