"You've won a
prize in our raffle - but you'll need your wellies!" My chosen prize was to spend
a day with the keepers at Newquay Zoo. Jo welcomed me at the start of a memorable
day, seeing behind the scenes, getting close to the animals, feeding them and
getting an insight into all the work the keepers do.
All the keepers seem able to do several jobs at once - their own work, dealing
with messages on the radios, talking to visitors, helping students and work experience
pupils, and still finding time to talk lovingly to their charges.
I felt like an elephant holding on with its trunk to the one in front when I was
holding onto keeper Ryan's jacket to wade along an invisible path to the island
in the lake. Once over, I was thrilled to let the gorgeous ring-tailed lemurs |
take grapes out
of my hand, and to put fruit and mealworms around the island for the lively squirrel
monkeys to find. We then had to make the perilous paddle back to the mainland.
We did it again in the afternoon and, yes, the electric fence is live!
"Come in gently. It's under there." "It" was a baby capybara, being cosseted under
the desk in the office because its young mum couldn't cope.
Lizzie the lioness needed medication. How do you get medicine into a lioness?
John's cunning plan was to sandwich the powder in chunks of meat and push it through
the fence to her.
Being a member of the Cornwall Wildlife Trust I don't like to see creatures in
small cages, but modern zoos have a vital long-term role in |
conservation by
worldwide co-operation with other zoos in breeding programmes, animal exchanges,
research and education, while keeping the animals happy in as natural conditions
as possible.
Doreen Wilson
Doreen makes friends with the racoons during a memorable
day behind the scenes at Newquay Zoo - a prize in last year's Trust raffle. |
