In case you didn’t know, the Assiniboine Park Zoo offers a Behind the Scenes program during the summer months. Off the top of my head, you can see seals, polar bears, snow leopards and tigers.
For around $100.00 (this includes an hour BTS and your zoo admission) you can choose to learn more about some of the animals at the zoo. On July 15th, Colton took me to see the seals, which is one of his favorite animals.
We entered into the usually unauthorized door at the Journey to Churchill Building and went upstairs to the area where the zoo employees train, feed and treat the seals. Inside this building, two male seals were waiting for us. This is Emil. His co-performer who we didn’t get a photo with is Gabbers. He is what they consider a dwarf seal because he didn’t develop properly. His flippers are smaller than they should be AND he didn’t develop a mouth full of teeth.
During our hour we asked the seals to perform some tasks for us which included touching his nose to the target, rolling over and splashing us. All with hand signals. We even got to feed them.
When it came to my turn to have Emil roll over, he wouldn’t. After a handful of tries, he finally did and then I got to feed him a fish for his efforts.
During our time inside, the seals did come out of the water and came right up to our feet. We were advised before the event began that if a seal did approach us, we were not permitted to touch it although they may touch us. That didn’t happen.
We were permitted to take photos but only when the trainers okayed it. We didn’t really need to though because one of the zoo employees was taking photos the entire time and then emailed them to us for free. She did a great job and was sure to make sure she got a shot of everyone.
We then moved outside to the top of the Journey to Churchill seal exhibit. This is where you see them swimming around before you go out the sliding doors and just outside the doors. Up there we got to meet Neptune who is considered to be the leader of the 7 male seals at the zoo. I will add that all of these seals are there because they were either injured (Neptune only has one eye) or were unable to care for themselves in the wild and would have otherwise died. 5 of the zoos seals are from British Columbia and two are from Germany.
I have to add that when we got outside, one of the bears was very curious about us being up there. This bear was identified as Willow.
At this point I could have turned my attention to the bears but I knew that I was going to be back here in a few days for the polar bear BTS. So we talked some more about the seal program, whether the zoo would take in anymore seals, which the ladies said they didn’t want to as they felt that the 7 was a good number. It is their opinion that at this time every seal was getting what they needed and there is currently harmony in the tank.
Willow was not giving up though. She kept getting closer and close to us to see what we were doing.
This is a great program. We were told a lot about the zoo, its seal program and we were able to ask a lot of questions. There wasn’t a question that they weren’t able to answer. I highly recommend it and, all of the proceeds go back to the animal program you attend.
CRUMBLING MEMORIES 