Poles, bears and tigers

[iad58]

From Anna Marie Edmunds, ‘Historical Overview’ (in Landmarks of Greater Pittsburgh):

‘Native Americans were the original settlers of what is now known as Pittsburgh, and battered with fur traders for necessities in exchange for animal skins.’ (What nations were those, I wonder? Does the author know?)

‘[…] Immigrants, primarily Irish and Scots but also Germans, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Slavs [underlined by me.—iad] and Greeks arrived […]’. (Argh! No, never mind that. Evidently the author doesn't know.)

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The Pittsburgh Zoo has a remarkable address: One Wild Place (Wild Place as such doesn't exist; 1 Wild Pl is an alias for 1 Hill Rd).

They asked me for my zip code at the ticket office. I said I was a foreigner. ‘Your postcode, then. Wherever.’ I stated it, and it was keyed in. I didn't name the country, though. I wonder how many places in the world have the same four-digit postcode as mine.

The zoo itself is quite good. It houses four bear species—though the polars, currently on holiday, were present only on pictures and in signs such as these:

The one on the left I found especially remarkable—I, too, am now a bear a-roaming ‹lays paw on mobile phone›.

Oh! one more sign from there:

I haven't been to eastern China, but I've visited forests in Russia many times, and I don't remember finding any tigers. Maybe they're afraid of bears.