Near-freezing temperatures Saturday afternoon could not put a damper on a festive milestone celebration at Great Bend’s Brit Spaugh Zoo as the facility held a “birthday party” for its pair of lionesses.
Lion sisters Sauda and Amana came to the zoo as cubs and turned five years old Saturday, and the public was invited to help zoo staff mark the occasion for the pair under sunny, but chilly, skies Saturday. Zoo Curator and Supervisor Ashley Burdick said Sauda and Amana, both from the same litter, came to Great Bend from a small zoo in Florida in 2017 when they were around six months old.
Before the four-legged festivities began, visitors enjoyed refreshments newly remodeled Ed Shed, decked out with pink balloons, at 1 p.m. on the northeast corner of the zoo for refreshments provided by the Great Bend Zoological Society. The refreshments included hot chocolate as and some appropriately lion-sized cookies from the recently-opened Hernandez Bakery in downtown Great Bend. Pink plates, napkins and balloons greeted guests.
Then, at 1:30, the bundled-up throng of guests gathered outside the lionesses enclosure as the zoo staff shared a gift with the lionesses in the form of a playful enrichment activity. Zookeepers built a small giraffe from cardboard boxes and tubes and stuffed the boxes with snacks and other food for the pair to, “hopefully destroy it and play with it.”
While one of the sisters, Sauda, took to the food-laden plaything eagerly, the other, Amana, was far more shy, venturing over to the giraffe only after much of the large crowd had dissipated a few minutes after they came out.
The occasion feels extra special for zoo staff, Burdick said. “For us, these animals are like our family. So (this occasion) feels just like celebrating a family member’s birthday for our keepers and our staff.”
Along with staff, several Zoological Society officers were on hand to help the zoo celebrate.
Burdick said she hoped visitors saw the occasion as more than just a chance to celebrate the lions. She hoped people would take the occasion to recognize and appreciate all the zoo has to offer.
“(We want people to see) how great our zoo in town (is), how much we care for the animals, and then just to have a good appreciation of lions and what an amazing animal that they are,” she said.
She added that hopefully the celebration, and the zoo itself, not only gives visitors a chance to connect with the zoo, but that it gives people a greater awareness of, and support for, animals still in the wild, as well.
The zoo’s other lion, Luke, also recently celebrated a birthday, turning nine on Jan. 14. It was a goal for the pair of lionesses to be a companion to Luke. Burdick said the zoo’s staff is still working to integrate the three. However, right now, the lionesses she said, are often out separately, usually in the mornings and early afternoons.
