Several years ago, I decided to spend the night in a cage at the Honolulu Zoo. A columnist is always looking for a different perspective on things. What better way than to see a zoo from inside a cage?

The zoo people set me up in an old bear cage that came equipped with a tire swing and a dead tree to climb on. I brought an overstuffed chair and a dart board. They put a sign outside that said something like "Columnist Gigantica — Don't Feed!" and I settled in a for a nice day of looking at all the weird people walk by.

The children were the most interested. "What are you doing in there, mister?" one kid asked. They wanted me to use the swing, but I was busy playing darts. Good thing the cage was wire mesh, because I think they wanted to throw peanuts at my eyes. I ended up only spending the day in the cage because one of the zoo workers told me the cage was crawling with enormous cockroaches at night. That was it for me. Social experiment over. I spent the night in a tent on the lawn with several other families there to experience the zoo at night.

So visiting the zoo last week was kind of like a homecoming for me. I looked around for my cage, but it was gone. In fact, the whole zoo has been upgraded nicely over the years. I was anxious to see Rusti, the orangutan, whom I have written about extensively. I was happy when they finally moved him out of a small cage (been there, Rusti, done that) and into a large grassy enclosure equipped with a huge tree and a female orangutan named Violet. The couple seemed not only deep in marital bliss but also deep in sleep. Huddled together, they looked sort of like a large pile of hairy laundry. A sign outside the orangutan habitat was more specific than mine had been. It said, "Please No Food. You're Making Us Sick. Blech. I Hate To Barf." I'm not kidding. That's what the sign said. The zoo sign makers have gotten a little zany since I was an inmate.

Two large gibbons were more active on an island surrounded by a moat filled with an improbable number of koi. I've never seen that many koi in one place. I don't know much about gibbons, but apparently they don't eat fish. They do put on quite a show, flying through the branches of a tree (the gibbons, not the fish) in breathtaking sweeps like they were members of the Cirque du Soleil Primate Road Show.

The two elephants, Mari and Vaigai, gave themselves dirt baths in the heat while tromping around their small enclosure, amazingly not stepping on any of their own "doodie." A new larger elephant enclosure is under construction.

The black rhino lay in the dirt, lethargic to the point that a little boy asked his father, "Is it dead?" And a warthog named Puanani eyed passers-by nervously. A sign asked visitors to "keep the noise down" because the warthog actually was nervous. They should give him a comfy chair and a dart board. Worked for me.