Pat’s Wildways: Visiting Jacksonville Zoo

I guess maybe Bucko and I are too old to visit the Jacksonville Zoo. On a recent attempt, we almost gave up, and we were already in the parking lot. It turns out you have to sign up for admission online. OK, well, we have smartphones, no problem. (But what about those people who don’t?). The kind man at the parking lot entrance told us to park somewhere and open up the internet. We dutifully found the “buy tickets” part of the zoo site and did our best. It first told us to click on the date. OK. Then the time. But we couldn’t click on a time; it kept booting us out. Finally, in desperation, we went to the gate where there was a man behind the customer service counter and no line. “Can we buy our tickets here?” “No, you have to do it on the internet.” “Well, I tried but couldn’t put the time in, and it kept crashing.” “Oh, forget that step.” “Really? Where did it say that?” Nowhere.

Then we were looking for the giant otters. The map said they were in the Range of the Jaguar area. Great, we found that area right away. And also a big faux stone sign pointing the way, “Giant Otters.” OK. We went around and around the loop trail through the area. No otters. It turns out they were in the back of an aviary, with nothing telling us to go inside to find them. No signs. Nothing but a wire mesh door, entering who knows what? The only way I found them was to open up my cell phone again and plow through all the descriptive info about the zoo, taking a while until I found one small sentence. “The giant otters are in the aviary.” Great. We almost left with the impression that the zoo no longer had giant otters. What a shame.

But things picked up from there for us. In a serendipitous moment, the Asian small-clawed otters were scheduled to be fed in front of the public at 11:30 a.m. Perfect. I used to study and work with Asian otters both in a zoo and in the wild in Thailand and Malaysia. Their otter group was healthy and active and in the largest Asian otter display I have seen anywhere. Wonderful!

There was a lot of other good in our zoo visit once we got in and finally found what we were looking for. The flamingos were strutting in an outdoor natural area, their vivid red color due to carotene, which they get in the wild from eating shrimp, and at the zoo from supplements to their diet. It was a good photo moment. The walk around the African area revealed a couple of healthy-looking rhinos in an area that still had a few wild wood storks in a tree, leftovers from their earlier breeding season, when there are dozens of wood storks feeding and tending their young right near the trail.

For an extra fee there are more experiences that await visitors, including petting stingrays, feeding giraffes, feeding colorful lorikeets, a movie theater and more, but we didn’t partake. Being retired zoo professionals ourselves it was a “been there, done that” set of experiences not worth our money. But for kids and families, I’m sure it was a hit.

The zoo grounds are populated and shaded with many varieties of plants that are native to the areas the exhibits highlighted, like African savannahs and rainforests, wetlands, etc. Anyone with an interest in horticulture and gardening will have a great time there too, just admiring the plants. Here and there, life-sized statues of animals let kids get close to them. The zoo animals all seemed healthy and were provided with diversity in their enclosures to keep them occupied and content. The keepers we met were all dedicated to their charges and the volunteers scattered around were enthusiastic about the animals they were interpreting for the public. It’s a great zoo to be sure.

But it sure would be better if people without cell phones in their hands could access it and navigate the grounds. Spending half my time on my cell phone is not the way I remember past zoo visits elsewhere. Or maybe I am just too old to easily visit a zoo anymore. And that’s too bad.

Pat Foster-Turley, Ph.D., is a zoologist on Amelia Island. She welcomes your nature questions and observations. patandbucko@yahoo.com