Brenda Haugaard 2 February 2010 Seattle 698 views One Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

EDITOR’S NOTE: Life in Seattle is pretty awesome, but it’s not perfect. Every now and again, we’re reminded that any high point of life of this town can be felled by a downturn in the economy, no matter how beloved it is. This month, a favorite exhibit in our city zoo is going dark — and not in a way we like.

February is the last month to visit the Night Exhibit at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo.

It is a marvelous place. You walk through the warm, hushed hall, stopping to peer through the glass to catch a glimpse of the Brazilian prehensile-tailed porcupine or the southern tamandua, until the group of preschoolers behind you starts pushing you along.

Some kids focus intently on the animals; others get rowdy as cats in the freedom of the darkness. There is a hint of fear. In the end, you arrive at the fruit bats. You hold your breath, hoping at least one will open its wings, and it does. And the darkness comes alive.

The Night Exhibit has been the closest thing the Woodland Park Zoo has to a dark ride. It has also been the highlight of rainy days spent at the zoo — slow days when you could actually watch the bats, not just spot them.

Some of the animals currently living in the Night Exhibit will remain at the zoo, including the two-toe sloth and the Rodrigues fruit bats. But on February 28, we must say goodnight to those which have found new homes at other zoos, and chalk this up to the winds of change.

Woodland Park Zoo’s history is full of hard decisions, from the unpopular to the absurd. Nobody liked it when the zoo ended free admission in 1977 and started selling tickets. And people must have laughed, if not too preoccupied by Atomic Terror, during the Cuban Missile Crisis when the zoo announced an emergency plan. In the event of a nuclear attack, the zoo would destroy all of their venomous snakes, for public safety.

The Night Exhibit, once known as the Nocturnal House, opened thirty-five years ago. It must now close because the Woodland Park Zoo needs to cut about a million dollars from the annual budget. But what makes the Night Exhibit unsustainable, and impossible to rescue, is the cost of powering this little world where the diurnal cycle is turned on its head. The cost of energy is measured by the zoo in both dollars and environmental impact. For an organization with a mission to save wild animals, this cannot be ignored.

- Brenda Haugaard

SOUTHERN TAMANDUA PHOTO BY JOACHIM S. MÜELLER