This is a solution not universally applicable to all zoos. Many have been unable to teach their lions to spit out the zippers and buttons, with resulting digestive distress.

That's definitely a swell punchline the zoo management is giving the parents to impress orderly behaviour on their menacing Dennises.

"Listen, son, stay close, or else the nice people of this zoo will put you with the lions."

Stage two: "And the lions are hungry!"

Stage three: "I'm sure they also provide doggybags for the leftovers."

There was a war going on and the zoo had to do what it had to do.

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Washington Post, June 26, 1955.

‘Little Lost Lambs’ Getting New Haven at Zoo

“Lost children will be taken to the Lion House” is the Washington Zoo's most quoted sign. Outraged parents of straying tots protested vigorously until they discovered zoo police headquarters was sandwiched above the lions. Now, at long last, the sign will be changed. Come winter, the Zoo is to have a new building, housing among other facilities, police headquarters and the most up-to-date comfort station. So now Zoo officials are being bombarded with humorous suggestions about wording a new sign!

When I was a little boy in the 1960s, I got separated from my mother at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo. Somebody took me to the Lion House (now an architectural landmark, still with lions inside it), and a voice went out over the loudspeakers calling for my "lost parents" to come and get me. I guess lions and lost children go together like (insert lyrics from "Grease" here).

Sorta raises the question of what happens to children, uneaten lunches, and misplaced haunches of venison left unclaimed at the Lion House. So many hungry lions, so few foundlings.

Do you think that the Management of the National Zoo saw the irony?

Lion house, eh? What if they aren't picked up by the end of the day?

"For items you may have accidentally left at the Zoo, please call the Zoo Police at 202-633-4111, or visit the Police Office off Olmsted Walk just above the Mane Grill."

Boo.