The animal contestants were served at a grand barbecue later in the day. In years past, a top attraction at the Cincinnati Zoo was watching living lunch fed to ravenous beasts. While the big carnivores usually got great joints of butchered beef or pork, the snakes and reptiles were served live rabbits, rats, or squirrels. Spectators enjoyed watching the hungry snake attack and kill its meal. So popular was feeding time that the Zoo published the schedule in their advertisements.
Throughout the s, the Zoo entertained visitors by pitting trainer Howland Kirby against Rodney the kangaroo. At times, the on-stage artists harmonized with screeching peacocks and trumpeting elephants.
The accommodations were nothing like The Met; performers had to dress and make up in a small village of tents near the stage, except for the star soprano. She was assigned the only dressing room in the building. For years, the telephone at the Cincinnati Zoo rang off the hook on the first day of April. A standard April Fools prank involved leaving a phone message asking the victim to return a call to Mr. Baehr, Mr. Lyon, Mr. Wolf, or Mr. In recent years, with almost-universal caller identification, the gag has lost its luster.
Sign in. Log into your account. Sign up. Password recovery. Subscribe Advertise Archives Contact Us. Forgot your password? Get help. Create an account. Cincinnati Magazine. Over the next several years, the zoo operated as a business known as the Cincinnati Zoological Company. To increase the number of visitors, the zoo invited one hundred Sioux Native Americans to establish a village at the site in The Sioux lived at the zoo for three months. The company hoped to demonstrate its products at the zoo to attract customers.
Since that year the Board of Park Commissioners has operated the site. During the s, it had different species of wildlife in its collections. Toggle navigation. Jump to: navigation , search.
Cincinnati Zoological Gardens Souvenir Book.
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