The Urban Pantheist

Putting my May schedule here for your amusement and my convenience:

May first: Doctor Appointment
May 2nd: New Puppy arrives / Mushroom class
May 3rd: I told the mushroom class people that I couldn’t do May 3rd for some reason but I don’t know why.
May 5th: Zoo New England Bowling for Rhinos (Main current source of stress)
May 9th: Gilmour Ride (10 mile bike ride)
May 9th: Zootopia (I have to dress in a suit and socialize with big money donors)
May 16th: Roger Williams Park Zoo Bowling for Rhinos
May 17th: Mastodon concert (If I go to this I am guaranteeing that I will get sick again)

When I was at the AAZK conference last year, I gave some paw prints to colleagues, in the hopes that they would send some of their own in trade. This past week I got this great bookmark from my friends at the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport Connecticut. If you can name the animal (the species, not the individual name) that made the paw prints on it, I'll send you a paw print from a cacomistle! Contest ends when I post snapshot number 1900.

Our AAZK chapter has a monthly Professional Development Speaker Series. Yesterday we hosted Sandy, a zookeeper who has worked for Stone Zoo for over 30 years. When she started, the zoo was run by the parks department all the other employees were older men with no college education or formal training in animal care. She was among the first female zookeepers in the system.

She and her colleagues started the Zoo New England AAZK chapter back in the 80s, with an eye toward improving professionalism at Stone Zoo and Franklin Park Zoo (at that time collectively referred to as the Boston Metropark Zoos). At the end of the 80s the zoos had their funding slashed by 3/4. The zoo accreditation authorities said that the Boston Metropark Zoos could not remain accredited under this situation, and Stone Zoo lost its accreditation.

The state decided to close Stone Zoo, moved over 300 animals to other zoos, and demolished 10 buildings. Sandy stayed on as the only zookeeper, taking care of the few animals that could not be placed: Major, an elderly polar bear (he died in 2000, as the second oldest polar bear to ever live in captivity) and a few sea lions.

In 1992 the energy of the community and actions of some politicians worked together to bring Stone Zoo back. Only a few exhibits were open, but over 10,000 visitors came to the reopening day. Over time more exhibits were added, emphasizing North American animals--since there were fewer buildings to house animals in the winter--as well as South American and Asian animals. A Mexican gray wolf exhibit switched the emphasis of the zoo from easily seen exhibit animals toward conservation and animal welfare.

Zoo New England continues to struggle with funding, but now is run by a non-profit corporation. A little less than half of the funding comes from directly from the state legislature, the rest from memberships, gifts, and admission. Stone Zoo's holiday event "Zoolights" provides a significant amount of the winter funding for the zoos.

Sunday was a busy day: the mushroom walk in the morning, and a zoo event in the night. The zoo event was Moth Ball, a fundraiser for our AAZK chapter. This year, like many others, it was a costume party. Since I spent the evening running around organizing stuff, I have very few photos. I was dressed as a female Starfleet officer. I promise to share a photo of that as soon as someone shares one with me.






The big entertainment for the night was a show from Puppetmaster Jake!

The 2014 AAZK Conference kicked off with an icebreaker at Epcot Center's aquarium, The Living Seas. A dimly lit aquarium full of intimidating strangers is not the ideal place to break the ice, in my opinion, but most people were quite friendly.
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Instead of our usual type of event (go someplace, walk in one direction for a couple hours) the latest Urban Nature Walk meetup was a moth night. Instead of meeting at 10 a.m. on the last Sunday of the month we met at 10 p.m. and stayed up until 1 a.m.

We met up at Franklin Park Zoo, set up some lights to attract nocturnal insects, and went around photographing what we found. Fortunately several people had great photography set-ups (compared to my little point and shoot) so there will be lots of great photographs to look at. Meanwhile, here's my set:


This is a Macaria moth.

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Yesterday I went into work on my day off to help promote Bowling for Rhinos. I sat at a table giving out flyers and awarding stickers to children who bowled with the toy bowling sets (suggested donation $1). In the center is Bill Konstant from the International Rhino Foundation, who came to deliver a talk on rhinos conservation and how Bowling for Rhinos is helping. On the right is the president of the zoo, on the left is one of our zooteens.

The AAZK loft corkboard.

Saturday I went to Roger Williams Park Zoo's Bowling for Rhinos event! I took a few terrible pictures but I need to save them to share with my AAZK ZNE comrades so we can learn from our Providence colleagues. This was a painting at the silent auction that I bid on. Didn't win it, alas.

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Two person Bowling for Rhinos meeting.