Animals In Atlanta
Jun 20th, 2007 by Beate
One of Zoo Atlanta’s new meerkats pokes his head up for a look around. Four meerkats and two warthogs went on display Wednesday.
There are certainly tons of nice things to do in Atlanta during summer break with your kids but which kid does not just love the Atlanta Zoo? My daughter does and so does the kid in me! We can not wait to go and visit Mei Lan, the Panda Baer cub along with all the other sweet animals and not to forget the petting zoo. But there is also the Atlanta Aquarium waiting for a visit and last not least if you are more in long forgotten animals, visit the dinosaurs in the Fernbank Museum Of Natural History. Beside that you can see the current exhibition Lizards and Snakes alive - wow we loved that a lot! Regardless what you do, enjoy your summer with your children and don’t miss out on the attractions our wonderful metropolis has to offer.
He slid up and murmured something only she could hear. She cocked her head. This looked like a good sign, so he got a little closer.
Ooops! Bad move. Shirley lowered her head. Thunk! Vern grunted and hot-footed to a neutral corner, his dignity as bruised as his ribs.
|
That’s how it is when a couple moves into a new home. And when that duo has tusks, disagreements can get a little, er, pointed.
Vern and Shirley are common warthogs, two of Zoo Atlanta’s newest residents. Wednesday morning, the two Phacocoerus aethiopicus debuted with tails twitching and snouts sniffing while a handful of school kids made faces and watched.
Next door to Vern and Shirley were Sniff, Scarlet, Scurry and Ruby. They’re Viverridae suricata suricatta, but it’s easier to call them meerkats.
The warthogs and meerkats are living at Kalahari Connections, the zoo’s newest exhibit. The display, a rock- and bush-dotted tract just past the elephant exhibit, has been under construction for the past few months.
It officially opened with a vine-cutting ceremony overseen by Dennis Kelly, the zoo’s president and CEO, and Mickey Brown, the zoo board’s chairman and an executive vice president for Georgia Power. Making sure they got it right were kids from all over Atlanta attending Zoo Camp.
Kelly first extolled the virtues of the African pig, the warthog. “It’s a great animal,” he said.
Well, it’s a memorable animal, a bristly creature with a head so big that it ought to fall flat on its face. If Mei Lan, the zoo’s panda cub, is a poster creature for cute, then Vern and Shirley are poster animals for …
Sophie Ritchey, take it from here.
“Ewwww,” said the East Cobb fifth-grader, 10. “I think they’re interesting, but they’re sort of scary.”
“And they need to brush their hair,” added her pal, Colette Minter, another East Cobb 10-year-old.
Meanwhile, Michael Johnson-Weeks squatted to get a closer look at the meerkats, just around the corner from the warthogs. The meerkats, each about the size of an underfed house cat, careened about like wind-up toys.
The 13-year-old compared the real meerkats to the fictitious one he saw in a certain blockbuster cartoon movie, and found them lacking. “They’re not very big,” he said. “‘The Lion King’ lied!”
The zoo has nine meerkats. The males — Big Flinch, Rusty, Prince, Blaze and Cooper — are still in quarantine after their recent arrival from the North Carolina zoo. They’ll join the females, also from the N.C. Zoo, in two weeks.
The females, meanwhile, have the run of the manor. They nosed about the place, sniffing under logs and zipping about like something was chasing them. Every few moments, one meerkat would sit on its furry little rear end and eye the sky with inquisitive, obsidian eyes — a routine check for flying predators. One stared at a passing jet, high in the wispy blue, before apparently deciding it wasn’t going to land and eat them.
The addition of the meerkats and warthogs means the zoo now has about 220 species on display. The zoo wants to raise the total to 300 in the next 10 years.
Over on the warthog side, Vern tried again. He sidled up to Shirley again. She flicked her right ear — a good sign. The two stood side-by-side, tails twitching like twin pendulums.
“Hopefully,” said Kelly, “one day they’ll start their own family.”
Maybe so, but they have to get settled in first. Vern, be careful