Glass actions and good intentions
15 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Beyond the zoo: Nature trips & thoughts, Russia's Grizzly Coast Tags: bears
It’s bear-wrestling season at the zoo, featuring Haines and Kenai! I never get tired of watching the boys play-fight, witnessing guests’ delight and offering explanations such as “He’s not really hurting him” — or, in response to this scene seen through water-smeared glass the week before last, “It’s not what it looks like.”
It’s true that the play-fighting gets a bit rough, and Haines sometimes does hurt the blonder, more submissive Kenai — a little, and probably not on purpose. Each weekend, volunteers receive an email report of goings-on among the animals, passed down from volunteer coordinator Heidi through our “day captains.” Two days after this vigorous session, Heidi’s email disclosed that Kenai (not for the first time) had received a bleeding facial scratch during the previous weekend’s frolics. She also disclosed that while zoo staffers were examining the scratch, Kenai snarfed down a whole package of dog food, suggesting a certain robustness of body and spirit. And as you can see in the photo below, taken four days after the scratch, he seemed ready to wrestle some more — and had every opportunity to get out of the water, where the wrestling always occurs.
There’s a world of difference between watching large predators through glass, where kids go nose-to-nose with furry beasts like these bears, and seeing them through bars or other barriers. I was reminded of this recently when a friend asked my opinion of a video that had gone viral: a baby in a zebra hoodie being “remotely” pawed and mouthed by the lion on the opposite side of a glass barrier at the Oregon Zoo. Enough Googling will show you a similar video from one zoo or another, year after year. The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo gave the best response I’ve seen about the protective power of laminated safety glass, and the furor over the zebra-hoodie child, in my opinion, had more to do with varying parenting styles than anything else. The child by the glass was clearly safe. Of those who frowned upon the video, though, some were more concerned about whether the lion was being taunted. Because lion and baby were both physically fine, it all boiled down to kindness and concern, or perceived lack thereof. The video’s joke, for those who found it funny, was that neither the baby nor the lion was in on the joke. And that same fact upset those who knew the baby was safe but still objected to the video.
As a volunteer at a zoo that has the utmost concern for creatures in its care, I’ve seen plenty of nose-to-nose moments through glass. Several appear elsewhere on this blog. Large mammals fascinate children, and vice-versa; the glass creates a weird, delightful intimacy that would never occur in the wild. If paws and mouths get involved, and grownups start laughing, and it all goes from Facebook to TV news site, we’ve seen that a minor controversy can erupt. But when those animal-child moments are quiet and private, with a spirit of reverent respect, then they’re golden.
My first zoo: back to the giraffes
25 Apr 2012 1 Comment
Instead of volunteering at my Minnesota Zoo last week, I spent a long weekend in my original hometown of Madison, Wis., and went back to my childhood zoo with my husband and parents. Thanks, Mom and Dad!
Henry Vilas Zoo is a cozy urban facility in the style of St. Paul’s Como Zoo — nestled up against Madison’s Lake Wingra, with exhibits conveniently close together and minimal walking required. I especially wanted to visit the Minnesota Zoo’s giraffes, Sweta and Zawadi, who’ve spent two summers “up north” but live mostly at Vilas, which has an indoor space for them. We saw three males together, and I couldn’t tell which of the two were ours. It felt strange to see giraffes contained by walls and a ceiling, but they seemed happy enough, and despite the previous night’s freezing temperatures, their outdoor season is close at hand.
This guy got a lot of laughs for finding the wall so tasty. A watching teenager marveled, “I’m shorter than one of his legs!”
None of us had been in the aviary building, where I saw the day’s loveliest sight: a blue-crowned motmot, above. Also quite handsome: the blue and gold macaws. The day’s cutest sight, for me, was an animal I’d never heard of: the Geoffroy’s marmoset.
That black spot is in the middle of his forehead, by the way; the pinkness below is his nose.
Vilas has plenty of animals that the Minnesota Zoo doesn’t, including the marmoset. Still, marmosets and tamarins share many traits as some of the tiniest primates, and Minnesota has two types of tamarins. Likewise, Minnesota doesn’t have alpacas like that sweet-faced white one, but both zoos have Bactrian camels, and as my husband noted, camels and alpacas are close relatives (along with llamas).
Other animals I saw Saturday that aren’t at my “adulthood” zoo: harbor seals, polar bear and spectacled bear (just a glimpse of those two), emu. We both have river otters; watching their antics Saturday, we heard a very little girl exclaim repeatedly, “They’re trying out for the Olympics!”
And we both have Amur tigers. The Vilas tiger reclined majestically in his living room of leaves, releasing one giant sneeze (my husband joked that he felt the spray on his face).
Here’s our exit view, with sailboat-friendly Lake Wingra in the background — a little slice of natural delight in the heart of my childhood city.
The family farm and a little girl lost
06 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Family farm, Northern Trail
The spring day was gorgeous: brilliantly sunny but so comfortably cool and breezy that I decided to brave the crowds at the zoo’s family farm and check out the annual Spring Babies.
I went for the piglets but stayed for the goats, who were hamming it up for the camera in a big way. Two piglets were play-fighting in the shadowy recesses of the pig barn, and several piglets raced back and forth, in and outdoors, including this pair (“where’s the food?” they seem to wonder as they confront the empty trough). Meanwhile, guests were hand-feeding goats with pellets from the pellet-dispensers. To call the goats enthusiastic would be an understatement.
The goats were rearing up on their hind legs to peer over the fence-top and sticking their heads through the strategically cut-out gaps in fencing. Since the big white goat was claiming his fair share of attention and more, I put 50 cents into a pellet dispenser, fed this little gray guy and patted his surprisingly bristly forehead.
Before leaving the farm, I said hello to Prince and Duke, our venerable American Cream draft horses. Little did I know that in a few minutes, after returning to the Northern Trail, I’d be discussing them with a small and weepy human who reminded me that in juvenile mammals of any species, an extra fragility adds to the cuteness.
Five-year-old Sophia was sobbing on the Northern Trail, where she’d become separated from her school group. Reconnecting lost children with their grownups is part of a zoo volunteer’s regular duties: There’s an actual written procedure for doing it. But this was my first time one-on-one with a distraught pre-schooler, and I wasn’t carrying a walkie-talkie-style radio to alert Guest Services, which is part of the procedure. I told the concerned adults who’d flagged me down that I would walk Sophia back to the main building and, most likely, find a radio-toting volunteer on the way. As we walked, I assured this pint-sized weeping zoogoer that surely her bus hadn’t left without her (she was absolutely convinced that it had) and tried to distract her by asking which of our animals was her favorite. None was, but she’d calmed down enough to explain that her favorite animal was a unicorn. It emerged that she, too, had been out to the farm and seen the draft horses, whom she conceded were equine and white enough to resemble the “real” horned thing.
We did find a volunteer with a radio once we reached Russia’s Grizzly Coast and the bears, but in this case, the solution was to keep walking: As soon as we entered the courtyard that divides the trail and the main zoo building, a teacher came forward and Sophia dived into her arms. And I was done for the day, feeling the unique sense of satisfaction that comes from helping a child. I’ve always found those walkie-talkie radios cumbersome and annoying, but from now on, I’m going to carry one.
Gobblers on parade
25 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in Minnesota Trail Tags: wild turkeys
Vigorous birdsong has been punctuating this weirdly premature Minnesota springtime. Thursday was mild and rain-washed on the Minnesota Trail, and the bird-feeding station fluttered with activity. Besides the usual woodpeckers and chickadees pecking at the feeders, our occasional flock of wild turkeys made a dramatic, and slightly goofy, appearance.
The flock numbered nearly a dozen, and their behavior had me chuckling. I’m taking a social psychology class this semester, and I’ve started seeing a huge chunk of animal behavior — human and otherwise — in terms of “social proof,” or following the herd. Within this turkey group, four males, or gobblers, had formed two pairs. One pair had its tail feathers fanned and was strutting slowly around in lockstep, like British royalty at a formal event. The other pair (together at right) also strolled, but with tail feathers modestly down. Several females, drably plumaged by comparison, took quick steps around the exhibit, heads down, pecking and clucking, seemingly oblivious to the parading males or each other. Eventually the two more modest males gave up on their attention-attracting attempts and strolled off down the zoo service road behind the feeding area, side by side, still in lockstep, heads held high. It gave me a whole new appreciation of the term “wing man.”
The National Wild Turkey Federation has a great Web page comparing gobblers to hens, detailing the several varieties of wild turkey (Minnesota’s is “Eastern”) and deconstructing their physicality, including the fleshy parts attached to the head (carbuncles) and the beak (snood). Males’ heads may be red, white and/or blue, while females’ grayish heads and earth-tone feathers help them blend into the ground while nesting, just like the well-camouflaged hen above.
Whenever wild turkeys appear at the feeding station, it’s always great fun to see guests’ surprise when we tell them the zoo doesn’t own or control these big birds. Even before the 2007 Minnesota Trail renovation and the feeding station’s creation, wild turkeys would just show up and stake out a vacant corner space between two official exhibits, as if to say: Well, this area is meant for wild animals that live in Minnesota … right?
The zoo even has a “bench talk” for these fly-by-night drop-ins, and when I saw last week’s flock, I brought out these feathers as talking points. (I like to tell guests that the turkeys aren’t full-time residents but “volunteers,” much like myself.) They’re not the zoo’s most exotic inhabitants, but the Minnesota DNR describes their comeback after restoration efforts — much like their more elegant cousin the trumpeter swan — and reminds us that the wild turkey nearly became our national bird before the bald eagle claimed that crown. And unlike most creatures you’ll see at the zoo, it’s hard to predict when turkeys will grace us with their goofy presence.
Itchy and scratchy?
03 Mar 2012 1 Comment
in Minnesota Trail Tags: cougars
March came in like a … cougar, or puma if you prefer. I marked the first day of the month with two reptile demos — blue-tongued skink and hognose snake, a great combo that made it a red-letter day in zoo volunteering. And for the last half-hour of my zoo day, I had a nice long coffee-sipping conversation with Rae Nan Harmon, scheduling queen of the Thursday volunteers and “day captain” extraordinaire. I told her the funny thing I saw in the Minnesota Trail cougar exhibit, and she put it into context for me.
The cougar, or puma if you prefer, was striding around the exhibit scratching himself on every stick, branch and tree trunk in sight. When I told Rae Nan, a longtime cat owner, she explained to me that he was marking his territory with the scent glands in his cheeks.
I knew from my Big Binder of Zoo Facts that cougars mark their territory but do little to defend it. But I always assumed “marking” meant “peeing” — which it can, but not exclusively. Whatever his deeper instinct, this mountain lion just looked itchy to me, though, as if plagued by the dry skin that haunts so many of us this time of year. Especially in the photo below: Does he really have scent glands in his shoulders?
Even the largest cat species in North America (an average male cougar weighs around 200 pounds) has a surprising amount in common with the 15-pound felines that share our homes. The charming website A House Full of Cats has a great deal to say about scratching and marking. I can’t live with housecats myself, though; I’m far too allergic. They make me … itchy.
Sadie and the boys
24 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in Russia's Grizzly Coast Tags: bears
I got to walk the Northern Trail yesterday under balmy conditions: my head comfortably bare, the sunshine slipping flirtatiously in and out from behind its cover of cloud. But I never expected to see the bears up and about. They spend most of the winter asleep in a furry pile, mimicking the deeper dormancy they’d experience in the wild. And year-round, they’re usually napping at noon. But heading into Grizzly Coat around 12:15, I was delighted to see Haines and Kenai wrassling in the pool, just like the old days. That’s usually the best thing you see at the bear exhibit, but yesterday it got even better.
Sadie, our lone girl bear, likes to stay dry; I’ve seen her in the pool just twice, on beastly hot summer days. Various outdated human female stereotypes apply to her: She’s shy and retiring and doesn’t like to roughhouse; unlike the boys, she doesn’t like to step on the scale, even though she weighed in last time at a svelte 530 pounds, or 300 pounds lighter than Haines. Here she’s pondering a dip, or just hoping Kenai chases a fish her way so she can catch it from land (fellow volunteers tell me this has happened before). Some human boys came by and started egging her on — “Go on, go in!” — but to no avail.
She didn’t obey them, but she bonded with them anyway. The fascination seemed mutual. When I told them she was a girl bear, one of the boys stroked the glass that divided him from her fur and murmured, “Good girl.”
Lots of human-to-human bonding happens at the bear exhibit, too. Yesterday I got to talking with Jen, a visitor from Rhode Island who twice spoke the zoo-related words that warm volunteers’ hearts: “You have such a beautiful facility here!” Not only was she in town applying for an education job, but she had worked at the Alaska Sealife Center several years ago when our Grizzly Coast sea otter Capers was staying there as a newly rescued pup. I wished her luck in getting the job and hoped that if she did, she would join the volunteer ranks on weekends. There’s always room for another enthusiast.
Remembering Taijah
10 Feb 2012 1 Comment
in Discovery Bay Tags: dolphins
Atlantic bottlenose dolphins can occasionally live 50 years but have an average lifespan of 25. Just half of all calves reach their first birthday, in aquariums and oceans alike. At the Minnesota Zoo, where dolphin Semo is cruising toward the 50-year mark with astonishing verve, his daughter Taijah made it to 18 months. Despite the odds, her death from a sudden illness Monday night shocked everyone who knew her. I hesitate to write about it here; local media have covered it thoroughly, and I like to keep this blog a happy place. But leaving it out feels dishonest. And while part of me felt anxious about coming to the zoo yesterday — I worried I might cry a little if a guest asked me about the death — the day turned out to have a surprising amount of light in it.
Here’s Taijah with trainer Robyn nearly a year ago, in a shape-training session I wrote about at the time. (And if this scene doesn’t prove that dolphins and humans should know each other, nothing does.) I have a soft spot for Robyn, who gently guided and supervised my hands-on encounter with Semo a year before that. I’ve been trying not to imagine the magnitude of the trainers’ hurt this week. Yesterday, I wondered whether it was appropriate to reach out to a trainer if I happened to see one. I did not see one, though; the dolphin stadium remained temporarily closed, shielding Semo and Allie and their trainers from the world, while life continued to surge all around it. The day was warmish (for February) and brilliantly sunny. Discovery Bay teemed with rambunctious school groups. When I moved on to Tropics, the sun filtered through the skylights and brightened the foliage. Surprisingly, a service dog accompanied two women on the trail — only the second or third “civilian” canine I’ve ever seen at the zoo. She was a magnificent long-coated German shepherd who, I’m told, greatly intrigued the DeBrazza’s monkeys when they saw her through their exhibit window. For some reason, a young girl insisted on taking my picture by the gibbon exhibit. Farther along, the tapirs were licking each other’s long snouts before they decided to go for a swim together. And I was happy at the zoo, as I nearly always am, even as my heart continued to ache a little. I won’t forget Taijah, and I’m sorry we lost her so soon.
Bearcat fever
03 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
After witnessing eight years of various annual language days at the zoo, I’ve concluded that Chinese Day is more subdued than Spanish Day, though just as fun. (And the fun continues: French and German days are coming up next week.) Yesterday, the usual packs of high-schoolers came to the zoo, setting up species-specific booths along the trails and sharing animal facts in Chinese. The Tropics trail, still primarily a home for Asian animals with some African and South American exhibits in the mix, was especially fertile ground for the teens. They set up booths by the lemur and Komodo dragon exhibits, and informative Chinese lettering showed up other places, too.
Farther along the trail, I saw the most amazing Asian sight of all: not one but two binturongs, or Asian bearcats, prowling around the tapir exhibit — yet another newish pair of potential breeding mammals this season.
This exhibit has always had at least one binturong, but in eight years I’ve only seen him or her curled up in a fuzzy blackish ball, usually in a tree, which is how they spend their days in the Southeast Asian wild. About a year ago, one of our bearcats surprised everyone by attempting an arboreal escape, which resulted in some tree-trimming. For a week or two afterward, a volunteer was scheduled to watch the animal’s movements, but those movements were few and far between, and I continued to consider the creature window-dressing for the tapir exhibit. Yesterday, even Bertie the tapir seemed intrigued by the sight of a binturong prowling so close to her head.
Related to civets, Asian bearcats weigh 20 to 30 pounds, with prehensile tails that are roughly as long as their bodies. The tails help them climb trees, and while they’re off-exhibit at the zoo, keepers sometimes encourage the bearcats to paint with their tails. (The bears of Russia’s Grizzly Coast also make modern art with watercolors provided by their keepers.) Aside from mating, binturongs prefer a solitary life , and my Big Binder of Zoo Facts calls them “very retiring” as well as nocturnal. At one point yesterday, when these two weren’t nose-to-nose or wandering along separately, one of them lifted a paw and lightly punched the other one in the face, two or three times. Whether this bodes well for breeding, I really couldn’t say.
The meatball bridge
17 Jan 2012 1 Comment
in Northern Trail Tags: dholes
The Martin Luther King holiday dawned sunny and mild, with temperatures climbing briefly into the 30s. My husband had yesterday off work and, incredibly, hadn’t seen the zoo since last summer’s renovations. So I took him on a two-hour tour of all the new stuff. He got a good glimpse of the shy new dark-gray wolf, and we lucked out even more when we arrived at the dhole exhibit.
Blyger and Prosit, the two boys from Sweden, have joined Piri and Fanni, the two girls from Hungary. As soon as we stopped on the viewing platform, a zookeeper came by to a conduct a canine-training session with meatballs and a whistle. He said he was “building a bridge” — by summoning the pack with his soft whistle and then tossing meatballs, he was teaching the dholes to associate the sound with obedience and reward. (A primary training goal: to get them to come off exhibit into their holding area at night, which apparently has been a bit of challenge these first few weeks.) Our friendly zookeeper also explained that this kind of training (also used with coyotes on the Minnesota Trail) was never conducted with Mexican gray wolves, the dholes’ predecessors in this space, because of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service guidelines for their management — in a program geared toward eventual release into the wild, the wolves weren’t supposed to get too comfortable with people. These Asian canids don’t belong in the North American wild and would never be released there, so training helps them adjust to their permanent zoo home while keeping their minds active. Because they communicate with whistling sounds themselves, the zookeeper’s whistle must seem friendly and familiar to them. And for carnivores, it’s always more tempting to do as you’re asked when there’s a big juicy meatball waiting at the end.
The new guy: shades of gray
13 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Minnesota Trail Tags: wolves
So yes, as I mentioned in last week’s post, a dark new gray wolf has come from Canada to live with the silver girl on the Minnesota Trail. I heard he was skittish and shy after barely a week in his new home, but I headed out in yesterday’s sudden shocking cold (from 50 degrees down to 10, in 48 hours) on the off-chance I might get a good look. Let’s see if I had any luck.
In that spacious exhibit with all those concealing trees, he was right by the window! I saw him before he saw me, and I edged slowly around the corner from the cabin-like viewing room to improve my vantage point. When our eyes first met, he showed his skittishness by leaping sideways and back a few paces. But then he staked out a spot and returned my gaze — until the silver girl came even closer and he transferred his serious gaze to her.
In the 1940s, wolves were so endangered that northern Minnesota was their only wild habitat in the lower 48 states. Last month, they made news again by coming off the threatened species list. (The Minnesota DNR details their return from federal to state management.) Of course, the world still needs wolf pups, and wolf-breeding season (late January to early March) is nearly upon us. I wrote all about Wolf Watch two years ago, when the silver girl was a 2-year-old living with a 12-year-old, and volunteers camped out with clipboards in the cabin-like viewing room, watching in half-hour shifts for signs of a May-December romance. That handsome old fellow has retired to a Michigan zoo, and the new dad-in-waiting is less than 2 years old himself. Like the silver girl in 2010, he might still be too young this year. But Wolf Watch resumes three days from now, and soon we’ll see if jet-black and silver-white shades of gray meet somewhere in the middle.
