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03/25/2007
Where Are They NowClinch Park Zoo's former residents adapt to new homes
Squirt, a river otter, frolics in her exhibit at Wild Center: Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks in Tupper Lake, N.Y. TRAVERSE CITY — The last time Tracy Mikowski saw Squirt the otter, it was through a film of tears. "When I left, she was there with her paws on the wire, looking at me with those eyes,” said Mikowski, Squirt's caretaker and companion for four years at Clinch Park Zoo before turning over the otter to a New York nature museum in June. "I touched the pads of her paw through the wire. It broke my heart. I cried all the way back to the plane.” The river otter, discovered in a hay field as a pup, was one of more than 40 animals at the Clinch Park Zoo when the Traverse City Commission decided to close the zoo after three-quarters of a century as a city landmark. The decision, prompted by the zoo's yearly $380,000 cost to taxpayers and complaints over its inadequate size and location near active public areas, marked the end of an era for generations of area families who had grown up with the attraction. For zoo staff, charged with finding new homes for the animals even as they pondered their own fate, it was devastating. Former zoo director Ken Gregory, a zoo employee for 20 years, still won't discuss it publicly The zoo closed its doors for the last time Sept. 10, though the exodus of animals to other facilities around the country was underway by then. Now only a beaver remains, awaiting the spring thaw and the completion of its new home at the Potawatomi Zoo in South Bend, Ind. Just where the animals should go was a question that consumed Gregory and long-time zookeeper Mikowski in the final months of the zoo. Besides calling on their contacts and connections for help in placing the animals, they researched dozens of other potential homes — and their reputations. "It was like giving up her babies,” said zoo veterinarian Jerry Harrison of Mikowski's efforts. "She meticulously checked everything.” To secure the best placements, the animals were donated along with materials and help with relocation in some cases, said Bob Cole, director of Traverse City's public services department, which oversaw the zoo. In Feb. 2006, the City Commission earmarked $58,000 in public improvement funds for the animals' relocation; the Grand Traverse Zoological Society kicked in thousands more to the cause. "We not only gave them the animals, but we paid for the transportation in some cases,” Cole said. "We really went the extra mile to make sure the animals had the best homes possible.” For Mikowski, that meant natural habitats and spacious enclosures — inside and out. "People don't realize that in a zoo (animals) are only on display four hours a day,” said Mikowski, who turned down the Toronto Zoo as a home for one of two Clinch Park otters when it wouldn't provide a photo of its holding area. "The other 20 they're in holding, which is concrete and bars.” Some of the placements were "no-brainers,” she said, like the eagles going to the World Bird Sanctuary in Valley Park, Mo., one of North America's largest facilities for the breeding and conservation of birds. The pair — called Cody and Tanka — have been mates since hatching their first eaglet at Clinch Park Zoo in 2002. "I really wanted these birds to go together,” she said, adding that they were transferred to the sanctuary with two eggs in a portable incubator plugged into a car jack. "These birds are the best parents.” Although the eggs turned out to be infertile, the eagles will have another chance to produce young this spring, said Roger Holloway, director of facilities and interpretive services at the sanctuary, where the birds share a 20-by-50-foot wire cage with an in-ground pool. Some of the animals, like gray wolves Eliza and Nelson, returned to homes they'd known before. Both now are at the Minnesota Wildlife Science Center, where "Animal Planet” has filmed. Eliza was raised there after her first year helping researchers studying wolf reintroduction at Yellowstone National Park. Nelson was born there, too. A nationally recognized education and research facility 40 minutes from downtown Minneapolis, MWSC is home to more than 50 gray and red wolves, plus assorted other animals including all but one of the bears, bobcats, foxes, coyotes and cougars from Clinch Park Zoo. The wolves will be involved in humane studies that will help biologists reintroduce the species to their natural environment, said Executive Director Peggy Callahan. Bears Oscar and Darla, whose 20,000-square-foot enclosure is four or five times the size of the one they had in Traverse City, will help with "taste aversion” studies, or ways to keep bears away from things like bee feeders and hives. "Everybody who loves animals espouses the need to have them back in their natural environment,” Callahan said. "In order to do that, there need to be some things we understand, like how to keep them away from human resources and how to tranquilize them safely if we want to catch an animal again.” Spike and Sunny, who were confiscated from an illegal owner and acquired by the zoo when they were 1, are the center's first permanent cougars. Callahan said the center plans to "retire” them, although they'll help provide education on everything from good stewardship versus bad to ecology and biology. Deciding on homes for the animals was only the first step in moving them, Mikowski said. "I don't think people knew, I don't even think the city knew, how much it would take not only to find places for these animals but get them there,” she said. "For every one of those moves we had to touch animals, sedate animals.” Some went first class. Squirt made the trip to the Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks in Tupper Lake, N.Y., in an air taxi, to limit her time in a crate. Other animals made the journey in trailers or trucks, after sometimes challenging maneuvers to load them. Seven-hundred-pound black bear Oscar resisted initial attempts at sedation. He finally was transferred into a 500-pound polar bear crate borrowed from the Detroit Zoo, and forklifted into a panel truck along with his companion, Darla. "It took seven or eight of us to slide him into the polar bear crate,” recalls Mikowski, who accompanied most of the animals to their destinations, along with Gregory, Harrison and other zoo staff. Each operation was a balancing act of sedation and timing, said Harrison. "The potential for things to go bad was tremendous,” he said. "At one point Darla was completely awake. She was in her cage but I didn't trust it that well. It was like, she's up, and if it's going to go bad, it's going to go really bad.” Once they arrived, many of the animals had a tough time adjusting. Take the bears. "The enclosure where they are is huge,” Harrison said. "It's in the middle of a field, it has to be a mile back on a two-tracker. It can't get much quieter than being out there. But they couldn't handle it at first.” At the Minnesota Wildlife Science Center, Callahan had a related observation. "The critters that have had the most difficulty adjusting is the bears, because we interrupted their sleep and they didn't get back to sleep right away,” she said. "And they're on dirt instead of stone, so that was another adjustment.” Buster and Baby, both raised at elk farms, went to the city of Gaylord's elk herd, a popular tourist attraction near the Elk's Lodge and a senior center. But with 108 acres to roam and 160 or so other elk and deer to roam with, neither knew what to do at first. "They just plain weren't used to it or used to running with the herd,” said Keith Roberts, superintendent of the Gaylord Department of Public Works. "It was a change for them. You could tell. They would stay by themselves.” Now it's a different story — especially for Buster, the largest bull in the herd. "He's fighting the other bulls now,” Roberts said. "Another bull comes in and tries to take the harem and it's like two drunks in the bar after a lady.” Squirt, too, was subdued after she arrived at Otter Falls, the 400-square-foot exhibit she shares with two other otters at the Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks, said animal caretaker Leah Filo. "The entire transition was a little difficult for her. She wasn't as active as she is now, she didn't play with any of her toys,” said Filo, a biologist with the museum. "Now that's she's bonded with our staff, she's doing well.” Now the otter likes to explore underwater root balls and snack on mussels and other live prey in her 8,138-gallon "river” — the museum's most popular exhibit, Filo said. Cougars Spike and Sunny took to their new environment right away, said Callahan. Not only do they enjoy a significantly larger enclosure on earth instead of cement, but a bountiful supply of fresh meat. "For better or for worse, we're close enough to a major freeway that we receive a staggering number of deer for road kill food,” she said. "The first time we saw Spike, that big mountain lion, pull a deer toward him and start tearing away, told us that he was going to be fine. That's just what a mountain lion should do.” Stella and Luna, Canadian lynx sisters born in captivity in 2001, also have adapted well to their natural habitat at Washington's Northwest Trek Wildlife Park. They may even get a mate soon, said the park's director. "If we can find a genetically appropriate male that we can acquire and cross with them to produce offspring, they would become part of the captive program that keeps lynx on view in zoos across the country,” said Ellis, deputy director of the 715-acre zoological park near Mt. Rainier south of Seattle. Marvel the deer buck has five "girlfriends” at Johnny's Wild Game and Fish Park, a petting zoo on the Pine River in Cadillac. They live in a three-acre fenced enclosure, slightly smaller than the entire Clinch Park Zoo. Not all the endings are as happy. Sydney the lynx and Wonder, a white-tailed deer raised from a fawn after being hit by a car, were too fragile to survive a move. Wonder was euthanized late last spring after a series of seizures; Sydney was put down with congestive heart failure in December at the age of 16. Two other animals — Ace the disabled crow and Julius, an old deer who is blind and deaf — have permanent homes with Mikowski and Harrison. "It was pretty tough to find better homes than they had here,” Mikowski said. "I don't think they could have found better care. "Bigger enclosures, maybe.” Clearing the Record
A photo caption accompanying the top photo in this story originally credited Stuart Dahne Photography for all photos. Dahne shot only the images of Jade and Spike, a bobcat and a cougar at the Minnesota Wildfie Science Center in Forest Lake, Minn.
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