Life is Joy-ful: The Greenville Zoo Experience

Pyper showing you how "sexy" it is to have the closest parking spot at the zoo. 

Andy taking a panoramic selfie of us and the elephants. 

 

When we first started going to the Greenville Zoo, Pyper was about 6 months old. It's a tiny zoo, housing 25 exhibits. Each exhibit is pretty small, even for the mega fauna. The great thing about the intimacy of this zoo is that even small babies, I mean human babies, can locate the creatures on exhibit without much difficulty.  It also doesn't take half a day to walk around to the next exhibit like at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, which I do hold near and dear to my heart.  This means that if you are going slow, reading all the signs, stopping at the gift shop, petting the animals in the barnyard, redirecting your child, and taking bathroom breaks, you can finish the Greenville Zoo in one and a half hours.  On the fast side I think we've cruised the whole zoo in a half hour. 

Lions, leopards, tortoises, chickens, Pyper, oh my!

Although small, the zoo is actively breeding "on loan" Masai giraffes.  The female, named Autumn, is from the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston. Walter, the male, is from the San Diego Zoo. In the three-way loan agreement, the first calf goes to Boston, the second calf to San Diego, and the third is a Greenville keeper.

Pyper checking out the Giraffes over two years. 

Autumn is pregnant with her second baby, due sometime in July. We have been lucky enough to be around for the birth of their first calf, Kiko, in October of 2012. You can even watch live camera feed of the giraffes leading up to the birth, if at all interested.  So it's a small zoo, but an exciting one. 

This posting was inspired by the first animal exhibit at our zoo, the Elephants. 

Eye to eye with Greenville's African Elephants. 

When Pyper and I first started coming, there were two females, Ladybird and Joy.  Earlier this year we had only been seeing one. We later found out that Ladybird had passed away in March.   Since elephants are very social animals, the Greenville Zoo had been looking at many different options regarding her well being.  They finally decided to move her to Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs where Joy would have her social and geriatric care needs met.  On average, African female elephants living in zoos live 37.9 years, she was already 44 years old.  Upon visiting the zoo Monday, the elephant exhibit was boarded up. Last week the exhibit was still open with Joy awaiting her transport.  Upon passing the exhibit we assumed she was on her way to Colorado, but through further investigation we learned she died suddenly in transport to the receiving zoo. It was sad learning of her departure, but almost devastating to learn of her death. Pyper was genuinely sad saying, "there's no more elephants, where did they go?"  

But this wasn't the first time Pyper faced animal death. We've unfortunately had a couple unexplained bird deaths around our house. Pyper quickly put two and two together. "It's like the dead bird!"  It's still a very difficult subject to articulate to a two year old, I'm sure there's a library book about it. 

This zoo feels like family as you learn about individuals. I've never visited a zoo so frequently as to be this connected or care so much. I wonder how Pyper feels about all this? 

Home again, home again, jiggity-jog