Chaos stems from an ancient word to yawn — within every panic, an underlying boredom sighs, waiting to unhinge its jowls and swallow the universe.
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In Zoo Tycoon — rated E for Everyone — players construct their own zoological amusement park populated by artificial tourists.
“Whatcha working on, sport?”
I could design landscapes for seals and watch them sunbathe.
“Seals are my favorite animal too. Love those slippery…fishmongers.”
I’d turn off the “tycoon” function and play on easy — the game was hard enough with Gevin, a grown man, leering over my shoulder.
“Call me Gev.” It never stuck. Unfortunately, I was stuck with him. Gevin was (according to some judge daydreaming of beachfront retirement) my Guardian ad Litem.
While my parents tug-o-warred over custody — fostering their own zoo at the county courthouse — Gevin was to advocate for my interests. Instead, he spent his time asking me why I didn’t like my dad. His presence caused me to take up the subtle art of ignoring people — specifically him.
Self-taught, but who isn’t?
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September 2004, Jimmy Buffett performed in Fenway Park as a stop along his License to Chill Tour. Six and a half weeks later, the Red Sox won the World Series, breaking an 86-year curse. Jimmy Buffett took full credit.
Another Jimmy — Fallon — was (secretly) mad because the victory “un-poeticized” the ending of his rom-com Fever Pitch, where his perennial-loser character finally gets “the girl” (Drew Barrymore) despite his idolized Sox (until then) never winning. Fallon learned to laugh off the serendipity, the rom-com word for coincidence.
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"Jimmy? I love the Buff!" Gevin gushed to appear more affable to my dad, whose new wife was a total Parrot Head — colloquium for super-fans who’ve committed their weekends (and wallets) to Margaritaville™.
Gevin could’ve used a change in attitude. I wished he'd also change latitudes.
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2002, Zoo Tycoon released expansion packs: Dino Digs and Marine Mania. Edgy teens everywhere could crash their younger step-siblings’ games and reenact Jurassic Park. Real sadists would recreate Blackfish.
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The average pitch thrown in the Major League is 93 miles-per-hour. Your average father-child game of catch is about 12. So I infer. My dad never played, yet expected me to be a wiz at Little League — a “real game” without pixelated seals. Each group of preteens was uniformed after one of the Majors. He beamed because my team was assigned the Red Sox. Other dads were jealous, even Gevin.
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Why Gevin? Why not Kevin like a well-adjusted human?
Naming your child with the subtlest phonetic shift will only set him up for a lifetime of confusions, low self-esteem, and uphill battles against autocorrect. He’ll assert every correction with obnoxious oomph. The guttural G will erode his esophagus until he can no longer swallow his pride. He'll work with civil clerks, golf with multiple judges, pontificate as to why children should take their father's surname unhyphenated — yet choose to leave his own burp of letters unchanged.
I wish I could double-click his cranium and retype his username.
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Despite fluffy eyebrows, blubber, and ever-smiling whiskers, pinnipeds (seals) are notoriously vicious. Seals harm more Antarctic tourists than any other cold-weather creature — besides humans.
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“Why do you like your mom more?”
“Imagine spending more time at your dad’s!”
“Your step-mom’s a meanie? Prove it.”
Only now do I realize Gevin was pushing the questions he wanted to ask his own kids.
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When David Ortiz steps up to the plate, crowds fade away, lights aren’t so blinding. There’s nothing but the ball, the bat, and Big Papi. Athletes call this “the zone”. Artists, “flow state”. Psychologists charted this phenomena, discovering the perfect balance between one’s skill level versus the challenge presented — whether you’re playing the World Series, singing to a sold-out crowd, programming animal antics, or feeding your seals.
Or you're Gevin soliloquizing.
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I swear my dad first introduced me to his new wife at a place called the Jimmy Buffet (no relation) All-You-Can-Chow American Eatery. It’s hard to confirm its existence since any Google search bum-rushes your browser with photos of the late singer. Maybe I’m confusing this mythical self-serve with Margaritaville™, but there were no locations between court-approved pickup points. Plus, the eerily easy-going ambience would’ve wasted itself away into my memory, overshadowing endless soft serve vanilla swirls.
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Sparked by RollerCoaster Tycoon, the late-90s game market entered a “Tycoon” gold rush: Railroad Tycoon, Pizza Tycoon, Restaurant Empire. Blue Fang’s co-founder John Wheeler launched development for Airport Tycoon — a haven for sad dads to languish in sky lounges, wait for custody Wednesdays, and watch pushbacks tow airplanes into terminals as if their eyes are helping.
His employees suggested zoos would be more...y'know...fun.
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His best-known song “Margaritaville” only reached no. 8 on Billboard charts. None of his other singles peaked beyond 30. Yet, Jimmy achieved tycoonhood on his laid-back brand of seaside sunbathing.
Seals would love it.
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New England's most chaotic zoo breakout occurred the night of January 3rd, 2001 at the Kittery Zoological Amusement Park and Aquarium Encounter. Over 43 species of big cats, reptiles, great apes, and invertebrates (excluding Gevins) escaped from their enclosures and dispersed throughout the Maine woodlands.
Local species, such as puffins and harbor seals, tucked-and-rolled back into their natural biome. Tropical and xeric fauna, disoriented by snow and northern constellations, dashed toward Quebec. Sadly, the stingrays were left behind.
This zoobreak was no coincidence (or serendipity). Some weeks prior, the zoo's electric fence expert bounced his year-end bonus check off his local credit union, triggering a freeze of his accounts and nullifying all checks outstanding — thus water off, lights out, heat nixed, and eviction initiated in the middle of a Northeast winter, putting his shared custody of twin teenage boys “on thin ice” (pun brought to you by the York County Coast Star). Thus, first Wednesday of the new year, dead of midnight and dead sober, the fence-man left the cages open.
Newspapers described the maintenance worker as nameless, inebriated, and “disgruntled” — though “ignored” would have been more appropriate. Mid-December, a junior accounting associate in Orono, eager to get a head-start on an icy commute back to his girlfriend’s still-married parents’ home in Biddeford Pool, found himself stuck calculating bonus checks for shit-shoveling zookeepers while he received nothing — worse: a half-baked fruitcake from a coworker’s grandson's Little League fundraiser. So, this data-wiz blasted Jimmy Buffett’s Christmas Island and typed shorter-and-shorter-hand — from “Christmas” to “X-mas” to “X” — while the tropical troubadour bellowed “Ho Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum”. To his ignorance, his Dell's bookkeeping program accumulated numerous bugs since the software's top programmer quit to develop some children’s game about LearJets, giraffes, or buffet logistics. The Xs next to every amount registered as emergency voids. Thus, the fence expert's X-mas bonus got X'd.
Now the animals are loose.
And chaos yawns.
Yet, our fence-man gazed up at Orion's Belt, listened to the symphony of excited barks and squeals, and found balance in the universe.
Most critters were recovered by end of March, except those that made it to the northern border. To this day, surveyors working for the Canadian Wildlife Service occasionally spot a family of re-wilded crested gibbons swinging through the pines of Niagara.
If you try to research this incident, online sources are nil. Your only hope is through the print archives at the York County Courthouse in Alfred. There, you may find an unbound stack of type-punched leaflets describing the events play-by-play. Perhaps it was once news. Perhaps it was always play.
Blue Fang denies any inspiration.
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Gevin wore a #34 Red Sox jersey — fake. Even as a youth who valued marine biology over baseball, I suspected the name on the back should’ve read Ortiz, not Big Papi. I imagined Gev paid extra at the mall kiosk to get one with oversized lettering.
“C’mon. Pretend you're doing this with your dad.”
Catch? No, I couldn’t.
I started throwing harder. Gevin started throwing harder. That baseball hot-potato'd between us like a leather-bound appendix ready to burst with internalized guilt.
Then it hit me — the ball — square on the knuckle of my middle finger.
It stung. I bawled. That stung.
Sweating through embarrassment and liability, Gevin drove me to the nearest self-serve soft serve. Vanilla swirl with sprinkles. Between brain freezes, I realized Gevin’s middle-finger mishap granted me an unbottled moment to cry without question.
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After selling over a million copies of the original Zoo Tycoon and its expansion packs, Blue Fang initiated the development of Zoo Tycoon 2. By autumn 2004, players could explore their beloved game with updated graphics and (more) realistic animal behavior. The sequel also introduced a function where players could assume the first-person perspective of a zookeeper, guest, or fence expert and ambulate about the parks.
When the yawning of the universe gets too loud, you can reshape the land with sand and seaweed, then sunbathe in cyber solitude. Maybe you’ll spot some fellow pinnipeds.
Let Gevin yammer. Pack the park with sad dads and their brood.
Then, delete all fences.
Works Referenced
Buffett, Jimmy. Live at Fenway Park, Mailboat, 2005.
Carpenter, Nicole. “18 years before Planet Zoo, everyone loved Zoo Tycoon.” Polygon, 5 Nov. 2019, www.polygon.com/2019/11/5/20678783/zoo-tycoon-retrospective-blue-fang-games-planet-zoo.
“Chaos, N., Etymology.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, December 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/7634913261.
“Chart History | Jimmy Buffett.” Billboard, www.billboard.com/artist/jimmy-buffett/chart-history/. Accessed 15 Jan. 2025.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. 1st ed., BasicBooks, 1997, p. 31.
Fever Pitch. Directed by Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly, performances by Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon, 20th Century Fox, 2005.
