The public can support the Great Bend Brit Spaugh Zoo and enjoy an evening of socializing, live entertainment, and wild animals during Wine In The Wild, from 5-8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 15 at the zoo.

Zoo Curator and Supervisor Ashley Burdick said tickets can be purchased at the City Building, 1209 Williams St. The cost is $40 for individual tickets and $35 each for three or more tickets.

“We’ll have live music, a silent auction, wine tasting courtesy of Rosewood, hors d’oeuvres from The Spread and animal encounters at each station, including grizzly bears, Enzo the tamandua and more,” Burdick said.

All proceeds will go directly to support zoo programs and exhibits. In addition to the Great Bend Brit Spaugh Zoo, this event is sponsored in part by Explore Great Bend and Rosewood Wine Cellar.

National Fox Day

Coming up is National Fox Day, on Sept. 17. The zoo will celebrate with a “keeper chat” at 1:30 p.m. In 2012, an arctic fox named Vixey arrived at Great Bend’s zoo, coming from the Winnipeg Zoo in Canada. A male, Todd, arrived later from the Como Zoo in St. Paul, Minn. The foxes became parents for the first time in 2015.

Clouded leopards

On Sept. 1, Burdick announced the zoo’s latest arrivals, a breeding pair of clouded leopards on loan from a Florida zoo. This week, Burdick explained more about how animals are acquired.

“We work with other zoos and have message boards called listservs where facilities can post animals they are looking to place elsewhere or animals they may be looking to acquire,” she said. The Gulf Breeze Zoo where the clouded leopards lived plans to use their exhibit space for something new. Under the loan agreement, the Brit Spaugh Zoo will get to keep some of the potential offspring of the leopards, and so will the Florida zoo. The leopards’ names are Harry and Ping.

“Once the cubs are old enough to travel, each facility can then choose whether they want to keep the cubs or send them to another zoological facility,” she said.

To bring Harry and Ping to Great Bend, Burdick drove to Dallas and the director of Gulf Breeze drove from Florida to their sister facility in Texas. “They are small enough that they fit in the large dog crates and could ride in the back seat of our truck,” she said.

While driving is more time-consuming than flying, “it is nice to be able to have possession of the animals and ensure they aren’t lost at a major airport somewhere,” she noted. “When we were picking up the tamandua the weather was bad and the airplane had to turn around just before it got to Wichita. It ended up flying back to Dallas and then back up to Tulsa, where we then had to drive to get him late in the evening.”

Serval

The Great Bend zoo’s animals have also gone to other facilities over the years. Todd and Vixey’s kits went to other zoos, one being in Omaha, Neb.

Our zoo also loaned its male serval, a breed of small African cat, to the Little Rock Zoo, keeping the female.

Burdick said ownership of the male serval, Akida, was officially transferred to the Little Rock zoo in 2021 “as he was getting older and our female prefers to live alone.” Akida passed away earlier this year. 

Unfortunately, he did not successfully breed. However, the Little Rock Zoo is working with the Serval Species Survival Plan to consider the potential of Artificial Insemination (AI) using a specimen bank. 

Come inside

While many of the animals in the outside portion of the zoo are in their cooler buildings and may be off exhibit during the hottest days, Great Bend’s zoo has over 30 species of animals to view from the air-conditioned comfort of the Raptor Center.