From the tone of the copy turned in by our domestic correspondents for last week's zoo cover story, it seems safe to say that they had the time of their lives on this hot weather assignment. As one correspondent put it: "It was really refreshing to cover a story like this. No speeches; no fussing with the technicalities of chain reaction; no political talk about Russia or Harry Truman or John Bricker. Just people looking at animals and birds, and vice versa."

That probably comes close to explaining why adults go to zoos--and why TIME'S editors chose this universal summer pastime for their Fourth of July cover. The photographers, of course, had the first, and toughest, go at the story and got, by all odds, closest to the animals--sometimes too close for comfort. After a day inside the snake house at the San Diego zoo, Photographer Herman V. Wall found that getting out of the way fast at the sound of the rattlesnake's rattle became second nature. Later, while unloading his film holder, Wall learned that the sliding door of the closet in his hotel room gave the same ominous warning. When his assistant opened it unexpectedly, Wall "jumped six feet."

Other photographers were hosed by elephants, yawned at by lions, spat on by monkeys. One had his tripod snatched from under him by a crafty chimpanzee he was trying to photograph. Eileen Darby, who took the pictures at the St. Louis zoo, underwent an encounter with an orangutan named Henry that is still keeping her awake nights. She had to get within reach for a close-up shot, and Henry, a friendly sort, put an arm around her. When he put the other arm around her and started to wrestle, she looked anxiously at the keeper and asked: "Don't you think he's getting a bit rough?"

The keeper nodded. Photographer Darby finally wrapped two lengths of Henry's chain around his neck and escaped, somewhat shaken. By & large, our correspondents had a quieter time of it. Some went alone to browse and gape; others took the opportunity to give their youngsters an outing. One, who spent a lively afternoon keeping his young son out of crocodile pits and away from bears' paws, found that he had to go back the next day to see for himself what the zoo was really like. The pair who bore the brunt of the cover story were James Bell and Serrell Hillman, of our Chicago bureau--home of the cover subject, Marlin Perkins, director of the Lincoln Park Zoo.

According to their bureau chief, they began their assignment with "all the enthusiasm of schoolboys excused from classes for a week." Hillman, a citified reporter who could hardly be expected to tell the difference between a chicken hawk and a humming bird, spent one afternoon "birding" with the Perkinses in Lincoln Park's vast private sanctuary. Says he: "For the first half hour we saw nothing but a couple of sparrows, a flock of pigeons and a mallard duck, which I rashly identified as a peacock. After several hours I was chilled to the bone, bitten everywhere by bugs, scratched on the face by some pesky twigs, and firmly determined never again to stray from a city pavement. The Perkinses managed to find some unusual birds. All I spotted was a robin--first of the season."

Bell, an ex-country boy from the horse-trading regions of Kansas, was especially taken with the very evident affection of the animals for their keepers and vice versa, and with Perkins' potentialities as a zebra trader ("No old-time horse trader ever handled himself more astutely"). At the end of his week he was footsore & weary. When he finally sat down to write his copy, accompanying himself on the typewriter with a cadenza of snarls and yowls, the rest of the staff was not surprised to learn that he had passed his last afternoon in the zoo's lion house.

Cordially,

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