Center stage
Roosevelt Park Zoo gets new animalsBy DAN FELDNER, Staff Writer dfeldner@minotdailynews.com
Article Photos
There are lots of new things to see and do at Roosevelt Park Zoo this summer, and as always, the new animals are taking center stage.
Fresh off his road trip from Denver Zoo two weeks ago, Mkono, a 1 1/2-year-old male bongo, has quickly made himself at home with the two females he now shares a pen with.
Barb Werner, hoof stock curator, said they have been trying for the past four years to get a male bongo into the zoo. With their unique name and striking, striped appearance, bongos are interesting creatures.
"They're an African antelope found mostly around Mount Kenya now. There's not very many left in the wild," Werner said.
Bongos are browsers, meaning they eat leaves and different types of grasses. At the zoo, Mkono gets a healthy serving of alfalfa and nutritious pellets to go along with his browse of leaves and grass. While Mkono loves his grass, he's also quite fond of dirt as well. At least he is when it rains.
"They like to play in the mud and get mud everywhere," Werner said with a laugh.
Like anyone coming to a new place, Mkono found it hard to fit in at first. However, Werner said he established his place with the two females fairly quickly and all three seem to be friends now.
"The girls at first were kind of pushing him around, like, 'This is our territory, you get out of here, we're gonna show you who's boss,'" Werner said. "Now all three of them are doing pretty good together. They've lain together, they're eating together. They're doing pretty good now."
While Mkono is fairly small right now, his father was around 1,000 pounds, so he could grow up to be a big boy. He's still young and getting to know his surroundings, even thought he has been known to walk right up to the fence and lick the hand of anyone who happens to be passing by.
"He's very laid back. He likes to be scratched and rubbed and everything. The keepers at Denver Zoo were really good about working that way with him," Werner said. "So he likes to get his little head scratched right there and I can touch him all along the sides and everything. He's a good boy."
Joining the zoo in April were a pair of snow leopards. The male, Senge, and female, Punji, are 1 1/2-year-old siblings who were flown from Oklahoma City Zoo to Denver before being driven the rest of the way to Minot by zoo staff.
Werner said the brother and sister have had a really easy adjustment to their new enclosure and spend as much time as possible outdoors. Whether that's due to their love of being outside, their close proximity to other, much larger cats inside, or a combination of both is anyone's guess.
"They have been fitting in well here. They don't want to come in at night, so they've been spending their time outside," Werner said. "They come in to eat and they must go right back outside. They're right across from the lions inside, so I think they take one look at the lions and they go right back out."
Like bongos, snow leopards are an endangered species. Werner said it's rare to see them in the wild, although a few can still be found in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Natives of that type of rugged, mountainous climate, Senge and Punji should have no trouble at all with frigid North Dakota winters.
Like pretty much all cats, be they domestic or wild, the two snow leopards are quite fond of their sleep. In fact, Werner said they've already managed to garner a reputation among visitors and staff after many hours of careful napping in the shade.
"People like to see them. I think they are pretty popular. I think people wish they would move around a little bit more. I mean, cats sleep 22 hours of the day it seems like," she said.
Arriving in the same trailer as the snow leopards from Denver Zoo in April - with a solid barrier between the two animal groups so they never saw each other - were four red kangaroos. Unlike the other new animals, who have names inspired by their native habitats, the kangaroos have names that are a bit more fanciful - Athena, Zeus and Hercules. The fourth kangaroo isn't named yet because it is Athena's joey. Werner said when they learn the gender of the joey, they will name it.
Athena is about two years old, while Zeus is a few months older than her and Hercules is about one year old. While the three are popular, they simply can't compete with the fourth 'roo in their mob.
"The baby's been coming out in the mornings and at night, getting better at hopping around," Werner said. "He's kind of wiggly, but he's getting better."
As most people probably know, kangaroos are marsupials native to Australia, which has a very hot climate.
While Mkono took some time adjusting to Roosevelt Park Zoo, these spunky kangaroos have made themselves right at home in their new surroundings, much to the chagrin of their new roommates.
"They're housed with the emus. It's quite funny, because we've actually seen the kangaroos chasing the emus around. It's quite funny," Werner said through a grin on her face.
Red kangaroos are the largest type of kangaroo there is. While the males have a reddish color, the females are actually grey.
Werner said the zoo's former marsupials, which were slightly smaller grey kangaroos, were fairly skiddish and scared of people. The new ones, however, are completely different, as the emus can attest to.
"These new ones are not afraid of anything. They'll come right up to you and they're just not scared," Werner said. I mean you can't just go up to them and pet them or anything like that, but they're just not scared. They're more comfortable."
All that feistyness has made the new kangaroos a big hit with the crowds, especially since the joey has begun to emerge more from his mother's pouch.
"You can see legs and a tail sticking out, sometimes just the head sticking out. It's so silly," Werner said.
Another new exhibit at the zoo can be found in the educational center. Fee and Lee, the zoo's former African lions, have been mounted and an educational display about African lions featuring them is drawing some large crowds.
"I see so many people standing there and reading over the information, so it seems to be very well responded to by the community," said Becky Dewitz, education coordinator.
The mount of Lee, the male lion, even took third place at a state taxidermy contest earlier this spring. Dewitz said what was most impressive about it was that Lee was the first exotic mount that the taxidermist, Brian Gebeke of Geb's Taxidermy in Casselton, has ever done for the zoo, although he has done numerous zoo mounts.
Something else Dewitz is excited about is the Zoo Summer Reading Program for children. In its third year, this program happens on Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m. A volunteer reads a story to the kids before an animal encounter that lets the little tykes get up close and personal with one of the zoo's many animals.
Today the animal encounter will be a bearded dragon, on July 28 it will be a degu, and a sand boa will take center stage Aug. 4.
As a special treat this year, the last day of the program, Aug. 11, will feature a book reading and signing by Avery Nubson, the author and illustrator of the award-winning "Pandas Paint in Pajamas." There will be no animal encounter that day, but there will be two sessions - 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.
Dewitz said this is a great program for kids and parents, and having a book signing to end it will be a great way to wrap up the summer.
"I get a lot of comments on it from parents. They really enjoy it," Dewitz said.
