HELLO, FOOD!
The Perm Zoo had an unusual holiday. Hundreds of kids flocked to the city zoo to celebrate “Polar Bear Day” on 7 December. The young guests greeted the main heroes and centrepieces of the celebration, three white polar bears, which came to the zoo from the wild at different times. The enormous white predators became the stars of their own holiday not by accident, said Irina Zyryanova, a staff-member at the zoo. “In the first place, the polar bear is a worthy candidate for its own festival. They are rare, so, we had a literary contest and dedicated it to our bears. Well, secondly, the polar bear symbolises, as they say, when the snow is near, the winter is coming soon”.
Three of these large beasts live at the Perm Zoo. Two of them, Amderma, who is named after a city in the Russian Arctic, and Yukon, have mated and given birth to several cubs. One of their babies, a bear cub named Krai (Region), is now a permanent resident in a Japanese zoo. Zoological authorities distributed the remaining cubs to zoos in different countries. The polar bear Terpey remains unmated and lonely. He is named after a village in western Yakutia near the place where he was found. The emaciated little bear cub was at the point of death, but, he was sent to the Yakutsk Zoo, and international inspectors transferred him to the Perm Zoo.
“Polar Bear Day” became a happy occasion for all the participants. The young visitors not only brought presents for the bears, they also shared the fruits of their creative work, stories, poems, and tales of their own compositions dedicated to the polar bears, including their own drawings and performances. “All of them were participants in our previously-declared competition sponsored by our zoo”, continued Ms Zyryanova. “To speak frankly, we expected a smaller number of contestants. We had 193 entries, with not only active participation of children from the city, but, also from the surrounding oblast, and amongst them were very sweet poems and stories that touched us greatly”.
The Perm Zoo plans to hold “Animal Days” every year in early December. The hero of the next holiday will be another one of our animals other than the polar bears, Ms Zyryanova said. There is no shortage of candidates for the event, for there are more than 370 species of animals in the Perm Zoo, fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals, of which more than forty are entered into the International Red Book [of endangered species].
12 December 2008
Yelena Kovachich
Voice of Russia World Service
http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=rus&q=93216&cid=22&p=12.12.2008 (in Russian)
