Kids Day at The Alaska Zoo

The Alaska Zoo celebrated both Earth Day and Kids Day today: all the kids got in the zoo for free, and we had tables set up throughout the zoo with games they could play to learn about being a good steward for the planet. I volunteered to help out for the last half of the event.

What I had forgotten was the fact that inviting kids to come to the zoo for free meant that there would be thousands upon thousands of kids running all over the zoo all day long! It’s surprising just how many kids there are in this town – and I doubt we got them all, even though it certainly seemed like we did.

I don’t have the final numbers yet (admittance always keeps track of that) but since the weather was so nice, I’m sure we did better than past years. We certainly had a full parking lot the entire time.

In fact, parking is a problem for these events. We’ve actually gotten in trouble with the Anchorage Police before – people run out of room to park in the parking lot, so they park along the side of the road. That is such a dangerous thing to do on this road! Visibility is limited even on normal day – add rows of cars parked in the ditch on both sides up and down the hill leading to the zoo, and you can pretty much bet on accidents occurring.

We offer a shuttle bus from the Greek Orthodox Church’s parking lot down the way, running to and from the zoo every 15 minutes. We also have one that goes all the way to the Dimond Mall parking lot on a regular basis. This eases the congestion a bit, but I still saw lots of cars parked where they should not have parked.

I was assigned to the table set up right at the entrance to the zoo so I didn’t get to see any of the animals, except for the red fox right behind me. He was basking in the sun pretty much the whole time.

All I got to see were the massive crowds coming in. They just kept coming! Everybody was in a good mood, and all the kids were very well behaved (well, except for the one little girl who just insisted on kicking rocks no matter how many times she was told not to). There were a few arguments over in the popcorn line, but nothing too exciting.

The “game” we had set up was this: we had 4 stations set up throughout the zoo, and at each station the kids would learn something about how to take care of the Planet. They would get a stamp after listening to each “speech” and once they had gathered 4 stamps they could turn their pledge card into the final station at the Snow Leopard and receive a special prize.

At my table, I asked them to pledge to go home, get their parents and a group of friends, and go outside and pick up trash around their neighborhoods.

I was only there for two hours, but honestly – with that many people, I could not have stayed much longer. It was fun, though, and I did see several people I knew.