Tammy Spratt, San Diego Zoo
While you were eating candy in your Sexy Ketchup outfit, or whatever you did on Halloween, Tatqiq the polar bear was keeping you safe from Frankenstein.* Now do you see why we have to protect this important species?
Tatqiq’s encounter with the lawn ornament provides a coda to the events of Mary Shelley’s novel. At the end of the book, the monster floats away on a raft of ice and disappears into the Arctic sea. By performing a scene in which he is then gnawed on by a polar bear, Tatqiq, who lives at the San Diego Zoo, is clearly offering a commentary on the novel’s refusal to follow the monster to his ultimate fate. Or possibly she just likes chewing on stuff.
* I am deliberately trolling people who compulsively say “excuse me, Frankenstein was the doctor, you mean Frankenstein’s monster.” Got sick of y’all during the “Frankenstorm” run-up to Sandy.
