Discovery Tour

My Discovery tour Saturday was a good one. I had two couples signed up, one with a little girl about 7-8 months old.

Typically, the way I locate the people who have signed up for the tour is by looking for the big green Discovery Tour tags that Admittance hands out. They are told to wear them around their necks, so I can just scan the crowd till I see the tag on somebody’s neck. I usually go over and introduce myself to them to let them know what to do and where to meet with me.

However, somebody at the zoo got ambitious and changed the tags on me! I looked all over the place and couldn’t find a green tag in the bunch, even though I knew there should be at least two of them out there.

I finally saw somebody with a chord around their neck and asked them if they were waiting for their tour guide. They showed me the new tag: it’s a picture of Ahpun, our female polar bear. Not exactly visible from a distance, but at least now I know what to look for.

One couple was from Fairbanks, in the Military. They had just moved up from Alabama, and have been in Alaska now for about 6 months. The other couple are locals who just wanted a guided tour for the day. Both were very nice, and I think we all had fun.

The tour includes two behind-the-scenes events, and both were very exciting this time.

All too often the polar bears are sleeping when we take people back there to view them. But this time the male was up and about, so they got some really good pictures. He is certainly an impressive guy, to say the least. Our female was up as well, but she spent most of her time back by the waterfalls, so was not as readily available for the camera.

When I took them to view the tigers close-up, I warned them ahead of time that they probably wouldn’t be able to see them, and sure enough they were not in their usual corner when we got there. However, just as we were leaving, one of them showed up so we were able to see them after all. They are definitely impressive, particularly when you take into account the fact that they are not yet full grown! They still have a few hundred pounds to grow into.

The other highlight of the tour was teaching the military guy from Fairbanks about the Cow Parsnip. He does a lot of hiking outdoors, so I wanted to make sure he knew to avoid the plant. I pointed it out everywhere I saw it (which is all over the zoo) so he got a good feel for what it looks like in many different settings.