So Very Sad

As we all feared, the "county" went through with its plans to begin the ultimate demise of Cypress Gardens. It was a divide and conquer plan that created animosity among the staff and many good people to be removed from their jobs and most sadly the loss of our beautiful Pedro. As most of you know, I bailed out!. I know that some of you die-hard Curators will call me a sell-out, but when you see something you love being destroyed you know in your heart you would want to do the same thing. I no longer work at Cypress, which gave me the opportunity to do something no other employee could do.. I confronted the man who essentially made this decision.

Dan Davis. Our petition did pretty well with 78 signatures and many wonderful comments from people all over the tri-county and even a few from out of the country.. Thanks! Armed with that, my mouth, and a pair of 2inch heals which made me approximately 4 feet taller than Dan, I waltzed into his office sat in his cushy chair and began to tell him everything that had been building up in my head for months. The politician pretended to listen as they are so good at and then told me his buisiness sense side of things. He never really understood that Cypress Gardens is not a buisiness. It has so much more merit than the amount of money it brings in. He also never really listened to my argument that it brought more business to the "county" than he thought. If people were driving to Cypress we were also sending them to Mepkin Abbey, to eat lunch in Moncks Corner, out to Santee Canal Park and other places of interest (hey if he was going to talk money I was too). He believed, ya'll hold on to your hats, that people didn't need animals at Cypress Gardens at all. You folks who want animals can go to the zoo. So I said " You are right Mr. Davis, there are animals at the zoo, in Columbia, almost 100 miles away and at 4.oo a gallon we are going to go every weekend and our schools can drive their busses there too" I think this was lost on him because he drives a "county" vehicle and has his gas paid for by the "county" even though most other "county" employees were forced to stop driving their "county" vehicles.

I also spoke to him about the RATS at Cypress Gardens. By rats I am talking about the 2 people at the Gardens who were secretly (although the whole staff knows who they are) trying to destroy it from the inside. The other rats are the ones that take up residence in the walls of the animal buildings.. the ones that Dan wants to turn into rental facilities after he gets rid of all the animal displays. Do you hear that DHEC... rat feces in the air and the smell of rat urine at your wedding, Brides. So all in all Dan pretended to listen, promised nothing much would change, really and that no one would lose their jobs. Oh yeah and he lied to my face saying only 2 1/2 positions were being lost (what is a half-boy paw?) when I know for certain 7 people were being moved from the Gardens to other jobs. Is that the same politcal math that made us look like we owed the "county" and its taxpayers so much money? I was unmatched and unprepared. I wanted to cry and slap him and scream. I got in some really nice jabs though and when we stood to part ways, and I handed him our petition, he looked like a shrimp or an oompa loompa or maybe just a really round weasle ( I know the name calling is uncalled for, but it's all I got). So then I decided I should go to Cypress Gardens and confess to my former Boss, what I had done. I guess he was thankful. I know the rest of the staff was. I had told Dan that if the rest of the staff (minus the two rats) were not afraid for their jobs they would have been right there with me. So all in all it was done, and now Cypress Gardens is becoming less of a good thing, after so many years of increased visitation by tourists, increased interest of it in the news and by amazing animal well fare groups like The Crocodile Specialist group, and the AZA. Cypress will slide back into obscurity and become just another road-side attraction that gets less and less visitors. Dan pretty much told me that this didn't matter to him. If he was getting rid of all the things out there that cost the "county" money, it didn't actually have to make a dime.