Short story identification: A boy visits a futuristic zoo and gets injured by a gorilla

Question

A boy, on a trip to a futuristic zoo with his father, suffers an accident involving a gorilla.

He is rushed to surgery.

After a futile attempt, the surgeon informs the boy's father that he was unable to save the boy's arm, but that:

he still has two "good" arms remaining. The mutation is the result of a nuclear war.

Any direction is appreciated.

By way of further information, I am a high school librarian, and one of my students is a voracious consumer of Sci-Fi. I've fed him much of what I have, but we were talking about how I started to read Sci-Fi, and this was the story that started it all. It introduced me to the genre and also the beauty of a well-written short story.

Answer 1

I think it might be Zoo 2000 by Richard Curtis in the anthology of the same name edited by Jane Yolen. I've also been looking for this story for a while as it got me into sci-fi and fantasy genre too :) http://www.philsp.com/homeville/isfac/t97.htm#A2177

Answer 2

The boy loses his arm but there's a twist, right? Yes, that's Zoo 2000, the story and anthology, and I read it in middle school.

That book helped set me on a good road. I can still see the font on the cover, and the binding was tan. It made an impression.