![]() When I happened to find that article about Flora, the Komodo at the Chester Zoo who reproduced via parthenogenesis in 2006, I was immediately fascinated by the idea of sexual animals reproducing without mates. “He can hear,” the curator said, grinning.Ī: Yes, it is, and there are documented cases of parthenogenesis in Komodo dragons. The curator and I had to retract our heads and slam the door shut before Jeff could rear up over it into the hallway. When we were behind the Komodo exhibit, he opened the top half of the door that led inside and said, “Jeff!” Jeff, the eight-foot-long Komodo, immediately turned 180 degrees and barreled for the door. The curator had never heard that and seemed incredulous of the fact. At one point I mentioned Auffenberg’s comment that early expeditioners thought the dragons were deaf because they didn’t react to gunshots. I visited the Memphis Zoo in 2007 and was fortunate enough to interview the curator of reptiles as well as both keepers who looked after their two Komodo dragons. I also wanted to get a sense of zoo life, without getting too focused on the habits of any one particular zoo. I read the ones I could find, including Walter Auffenberg’s definitive 1981 book based on his research while living on Komodo Island. ![]() Because Westerners first encountered the Komodo dragon relatively recently, there aren’t a great deal of academic studies available. Q: What sort of research did you do to write the book?Ī: Although I would have loved to travel to Indonesia, my budget dictated that most research had to be conducted through reading. As the planet’s current conquering species, what is our responsibility to the other creatures who live here? We’ve come a long way from the roadside menageries, but do we have the right to capture and display animals for entertainment or education? What if, like Komodos, the species is losing its natural habitat? There are a lot of issues to consider, and I hope I’ve been able to introduce some of those questions for readers. Q: Are you trying to say that zoos are a bad institution?Ī: I didn’t want the book to be strictly pro-zoo or anti-zoo, but I did want to raise questions that we don’t always think about when we visit zoos. The Zoo of America is, of course, completely fictional, and I began thinking of it as corporate America, as in: “How would corporate America behave if it owned a zoo?” The actual zoos I was lucky enough to visit while researching the book were conscientious, humane institutions that bear little resemblance to the Zoo of America. My work life has been largely spent in corporations, and that’s the employer that ultimately came to the page. My zookeeper abilities don’t extend much beyond feeding a cat. After I graduated, I revised the book two more times in the two years that followed, while working on other projects as well.Ī: No, I never have. Since I have a full-time job, I wrote mostly during my lunch breaks and before classes at night. I wrote the book during my last two years in the Hamline MFA program, and it became my thesis. I was fascinated by this woman, by the revelation that animals had begun reproducing without mates, and by the idea of a love story between a zookeeper and a dragon. Jon Stewart made some joke about how pathetic this woman was, and in that moment I knew I had to write this story. The dragons had hatched, and one of the zookeepers told the cameraman that it was the best day of her life. ![]() ![]() A few weeks later, I was watching The Daily Show back at home when they aired a clip from the Chester Zoo. I knew there was a much bigger story there, but I had no idea it could be a novel. I immediately ripped the article out of the paper and read it obsessively in my hotel room over the next few days. It was clearly intended as entertainment. Since it was so close to Christmas, the article made a lot of overt comparisons to the Virgin Mary, and the tone of the entire piece was very light. Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Dragon Keeper, and how long did it take you to write it? Did you have a special routine or place in which you wrote?Ī: I was on a business trip in London in December of 2006 when I read an article in the paper about a Komodo dragon reproducing via parthenogenesis at the Chester Zoo. Q&A with Mindy Mejia, author of The Dragon Keeper ![]()
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