A great fireworks display!
Everyone loves a great fireworks display to celebrate Independence Day! (Well, almost everyone.) Houston has many fantastic pyrotechnic shows, including a big one here in Hermann Park. This year a great patriotic weekend in the park included a visit to the Zoo for several thousand people – thanks for coming!
Fireworks are exciting for humans, but the “rockets’ red glare” and ”bombs bursting in air” are lost on most animals. If your dog is anything like mine, fireworks are not just another weird human behavior, but possibly the beginning of the end of the world. (I spent Sunday night re-confirming to my dog that it was not. In fact, the whole weekend proved to be a test of his bladder, as he flatly refused to go outside once the neighbors started their festivities.)
Most of the animals at the Zoo are just fine on the Fourth. Like the helicopters that fly nearby and the ambulances on their way to the Medical Center, the fireworks are one more human noise to ignore. There are a few animals that are a bit more nervous, though, and those get special attention on the Fourth of July. Our cassowary is one of those animals. He gets his own personal keeper during the fireworks, someone to keep an eye on him and respond in case things get a little hairy. Fortunately this year he was quite mellow and I’ve been told it was an uneventful watch.
Fireworks aren’t the only thing that can spook our animals, but the keepers know what bothers their charges and adjustments are made to avoid these situations when possible. For example, there are certain areas of the Zoo the street sweeper skips in the mornings. But animals figure it out pretty quickly. Even if something is scary at first, if it continues and nothing happens to the animal then whatever was frightening loses its threat. (This is called desensitization in animal training lingo.) A great example is the African Forest construction – it’s been ongoing for a while, so the neighboring animals have tuned it out completely. Unfortunately it needs to be something that the animal experiences frequently or continuously, meaning that the handful of animals who fear the Fourth will continue to need special attention on the night the fire flowers fly.
How about your own animals? Did they survive the Fourth of July, or maybe even enjoy it?