Super-size me!

Feb 112012
 

At many zoos peafowl are allowed to roam loose on the grounds where they pretty much fend for themselves to find food and shelter. Keepers in the animal hospital were having a hard time getting an ailing peacock to eat. They offered him every sort of normal fowl food that they could think of and he refused them all.

Finally, they stopped to consider what sort of food the bird had been used to eating. They went to a nearby food stand and got some popcorn and French fries. The bird, of course, began eating immediately.

 Animal Hospital

Turkey vulture FTW

Feb 112012
 

Many zoo animals get used to a set routine, and the turkey vulture in the Southwest United States exhibit in the children’s zoo was no exception. The exhibit, which he shared with a few prairie dogs and assorted lizards, was an oblong, walled enclosure with glass in the front. Children could see in through the glass and adults could lean over the open top.

The vulture was brought inside every afternoon, although not always at the same time. Some days the bird was ready to go in before keepers came to get him and he would hop up and wait on the front wall of the enclosure. If that subtle hint wasn’t taken within a few minutes he would simply hop down and walk to the holding area.

Often keepers working inside the building would be warned of his approach, either by visitor’s screams as he marched resolutely through the crowds, or by the distinctive clicking of his toenails on the cement. Other times they would just open the door and find him waiting impatiently to be let in.

His greatest escapade, however, was the day that he made it completely out of the children’s zoo. Somehow he managed to end up inside the Kodiak bear grotto. The adult female bear had recently died, but her three young male offspring were still in the exhibit. Although they had nearly reached full adult size, the bears were still immature. And they didn’t quite know how to deal with this unusual creature that had suddenly appeared in their grotto.

The turkey vulture had no such qualms. Hissing and flapping his wings, he had those three young bears, each of which outweighed him by quite a few hundred pounds, backed into a corner. The bears were scrambling backwards over each other in an attempt to get as far away from him as possible.

The situation was eventually resolved peacefully. The bears’ den door was opened, allowing them to beat a hasty, if undignified, retreat to the safety of their den, and the turkey vulture was quickly recaptured and returned safely to the children’s zoo.

 Children's Zoo

Math is hard

Feb 112012
 

Visitor in giraffe building to keeper: “How old is that baby giraffe?”

“Well, he’ll be a year old in about a month.”

“Oh. And how old is it now?”

 The Great Unwashed

When you don’t know…make something up

Feb 102012
 

A mother and her young daughter standing in front of a mixed-species exhibit in the nocturnal Australia building:

“Mommy, what’s that animal?” (Pointing at a hairy-nosed wombat.)

“I don’t know.”

“What’s that one?” (Pointing at a brush-tailed possum near the wombat.)

“It’s a baby of that other one.”

“But why does the little one have a tail and the big one doesn’t?”

“Because their tails fall off as they grow up.”

 The Great Unwashed

Don’t break the sea lions, please

Feb 092012
 

Feeding time at the sea lion grotto was always popular and a large crowd would gather to watch. The keeper, who stood inside the exhibit to pass out the fish, generally carried a stick to keep the animals back a reasonable distance. One old female, who was almost totally blind, was more persistent than usual one day and the usual pushes and pokes with the stick were not stopping her. Finally, he gave her a sharp (but not very hard) tap on the top of her head.

The keeper was astounded to see the animal collapse as if she had been shot, topple over, and sink like a rock to the bottom of the pool. He immediately got assistance to pull her out of the water but to their amazement she was already dead.

A necropsy showed that for some reason, either genetic or medical, the bony covering over her skull had been exceptionally thin and had just crumpled in spite of the fact that he hadn’t hit her hard at all. Her skull was so thin, in fact, that the veterinarians were surprised that she had lived as long as she had without bumping into anything due to her blindness.

 Marine Mammals

Gecko 1, glove 0

Feb 092012
 

As an experiment in non-chemical pest control, geckos had been released in several of the animal buildings where cockroaches were a problem. One winter day in the primate house, one of the geckos was sitting on a wall near the public area. One visitor, naturally, had to poke the peacefully resting lizard, which turned and bit down on one of his gloved fingers. The gecko was too small to cause any damage to the visitor’s finger, but it clamped securely onto the glove and refused to let go.

When the tenacious reptile showed no intention of letting go after a few minutes the man summoned help. Keepers weren’t able to get the gecko off either, and they were reluctant to use force for fear of breaking its jaws. Finally, they persuaded the man to leave the glove with them and pick it up later.

Several hours later, however, the gecko was as firmly attached as ever. The keepers ended up taking the stubborn lizard to the animal hospital where it was sedated enough to relax its jaws. No one can recall if the visitor ever returned to claim his glove.

 Reptiles & Amphibians

Gone walkabout

Feb 092012
 

In the indoor Australian “walkabout” the animals were exhibited in a series of open grottos, which the public viewed from an elevated walkway winding around between the exhibits. The barless enclosures were fine for the wombats and Tasmanian devils, but they were no match for the agile brush-tailed possums. The possums jumped effortlessly in and out moving freely between the various exhibits.

Visitors tended to congregate in front of the Tasmanian devil exhibit to get a look at the almost legendary creature that most of them knew only from the huge, aggressively violent creature called a Tasmanian devil in the well-known cartoon series.

Due to the devil’s shyness, however, and the possum’s desire to roam, the animal they were seeing was more often than not a brush-tailed possum. The visitors often expressed surprise that the “devil” was so small. And they were often more surprised when the animal jumped out of the exhibit, landing on the railing in front of them.

Keepers said that the possum seemed to wait until there was a large crowd in order to cause the greatest possible panic.

 Small Mammals

Good time for a break

Feb 092012
 

Workers renovating a bear den were made a bit nervous by the presence of the den’s regular occupant in an adjacent den. The door between the dens appeared sturdy enough—it was made of heavy metal with only a small, heavily-barred window. The bear, however, was watching them intently through the window and occasionally would pound on the door or even reach his plate-sized paws through the window. The workers were concerned that should anything happen it would be difficult for all of them to evacuate the stall quickly through the one small access door.

The final straw came when the workers noticed several inches of claws protruding from gaps between the door and the wall on either side of the door. They decided that it was time for a break, packed up their tools, locked up the den, and left. When they returned a few minutes later, they discovered that the bear had torn the door loose and was loose in the den that they had only recently vacated.

 Carnivores

Good question!

Feb 092012
 

Why is it that nine times out of ten the visitor that sees you shoveling manure and asks, ‘‘How can you stand to do that?” is pushing a baby in diapers?

• • • • •

Why is it that apparently rational adults will stand for ten minutes or more and watch a stream of water and manure going down a drain?

• • • • •

Why is it that visitors can look at a keeper scraping feces off a cage floor and say, “Look, she’s feeding them!”

• • • • •

Why is it that visitors standing in front of an exhibit of a very rare or endangered species are more interested in the ground squirrel at their feet?

• • • • •

Why do people whistle at all the animals to get their attention?

• • • • •

Why is it that when people ask you for directions they rarely go the way you indicated?

• • • • •

Why do kids always howl like wolves when they walk into a nocturnal building?

• • • • •

Why is it that whenever you’re having problems with an animal—particularly a dangerous one—the public always roots for the animal?

• • • • •

Why do people always assume that keepers don’t know what they’re doing? (Look out, it’s going to get you!)

• • • • •

Why do photographers feel that they are allowed to climb over fences and disregard signs in order to get a picture?

• • • • •

Why is it that a visitor can look at an animal with huge horns, such as an ibex or a Dall’s sheep, and ask, “Don’t they bite?”

• • • • •

Why do some visitors assume that all zoo animals are tame?

• • • • •

What can people be thinking when they wear a fur coat to the zoo?

 Good Question

So how did they?

Feb 092012
 

A father was going down the row of cages, diligently reading each sign to his young son. After a while the boy looked up with a puzzled expression on his face and asked, “But how did they know what they were called?”

 The Great Unwashed
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