Last Zoofari Night for this Summer
Tonight was the last late-night "Zoofari" at the zoo for this summer, so we did a very quick grocery shopping, and wolfed down B's tuna casserole dinner so we could leave as soon as possible. Which ended up being 7:30. It was hot (90º) and got more humid as the evening progressed, so we had our amble walk on. Elephant yard looks like the dirt is as hard as concrete. Despite the bit of rain last week, we are still in the midst of a severe drought here. The warthog was out. We don't get to see Boris too often. But when we saw him this weekend, the vet was there checking out a back leg, because Boris was limping pretty badly. From what we could make out of the vet's body language, Boris hurt his left back ankle, probably a strain/sprain. Tonight he was still limping, but putting a lot more weight on the leg.
While we were watching him, we noticed several you rabbits in the enclosure, including one that appeared to be in some distress. Movement caught my eye and when I first saw her (him?) he was rolling onto his side, bounced off the lower strand of the electric fence, and then was flopping on the ground. She didn't seem to be able to catch her balance, and every time she tried to stand up she fell over. All of her flopping finally took her under the electrified 2 strand wire fence, and she finally stopped about 2 feet inside the Warthog yard. She lay there for a while, then started grooming herself, and managed to sit up (falling over as she moved). We watched her for about 10 minutes (well, and the elephants, and Boris, and the hippos). We were trying to figure out if the rabbit was sick, or if it had just accidentally hit the fence and so it was woozy from getting zapped. We kept an eye out for a keeper, and eventually we saw Dana & Rhino Ray bring snacks out to the ellies. So I went over and talked to Ray, mentioning that my concern was that the rabbit might be diseased and could in some way harm Boris or one of the other zoo animals. Ray didn't seem concerned but said he would look for her when he went to clean the Warthog enclosure "pretty soon". So we watched for a few more minutes, then continued on our walk. By the time we got around to the lions & zebras, we decided that we were just going to do a short circle and go back and check on the rabbit.
She was still sitting in the same spot, she was still very wobbly, she was eating. When she tried to make big movements (alert sitting up, or a hop forward) she would flop over; so she was still having her issues after 30+ minutes. While we watched Rhino Ray did indeed come in to clean up the yard, and when he came close we pointed out the rabbit. right when he looked at her she tried to move and flopped over. This got Ray's attention and he took a step towards her. The rabbit tried to run, but kept falling over. She did manage to move about 5 feet to a fallen tree trunk around which she & ray parried and feinted. Finally she took off towards the back of the yard, and through the gate into the inner sanctum. Ray followed her, and did not immediately return. Then we saw the other keeper, Dana, come over as well. So I think Ray was concerned enough about her behavior to possible try to catch her, or at least isolate her. We've heard that distemper and rabies is going through the raccoon
/opossum/varmint animals this summer. But I don't know (yet) what the symptoms are for any of those. It could also be that she just has neurological issues and has been able to live in the relative security of the zoo's animal yards.
So that was our exciting and sweaty time at the zoo. Came home and only managed to watch about 90 minutes worth of the Olympics, still catching up on the equestrian Cross Country portion of the Team Eventing. It's gonna take a few days to finish that and the stadium jumping. (Patience, Goldiebug, please!)