Monday | 7 October 2024 | Reg No- 06
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Toronto Zoo: Reminiscence of childhood

Published : Thursday, 16 March, 2017 at 12:00 AM  Count : 204
Zubair Hossain
I forgot when I went to a zoo for the last time. It must be 15-16 years back. But the word 'zoo' always evokes a fond memory of happy childhood. In my imagination, I see a young boy of about 10-year old wandering around cage to cage in Dhaka zoo. His small pocket is overflowing with peanuts, because he thought he would feed those to the monkeys. His eyes were tracking every move of Royal Bengal Tiger, as if he was hypnotized. He wanted to stay glued to the cage of the peacock until it opens its feathers.
However, coming to the present time, I suddenly discovered that I live only 2-hour drive from one of the largest zoos in the world --- Toronto Zoo. So, two of my friends and I made a plan to revive our sweet memory. A sunny Saturday means there will be a huge crowd gathering in all the tourist places. We were smart enough to skip the queue for the entry tickets by booking online in advance! We reached there by 10am. On the entrance, we were handed a beautiful pictorial map of the zoo. The 700 acres of land area of the zoo is very thoughtfully planned to secure around 500 species. The zoo is subdivided into seven zoogeographic regions: Africa, Americas, Australasia, Eurasia, Indo-Malaya, Tundra Trek and the Canadian domain, each representing the most attractive animals of that area. If you feel like it's too much walking in this scattered place, then you don't have to! They have Zoomobile, a train that takes the visitors from one region to the other and stops at four stations. While in Canada, do as the Canadians do! So we decided to start with the Canadian domain. We hopped into the train and our journey began.
The train journey was a fun ride. Well, it was a bonus on top of the zoo visit. It reminded me of the toy-train rides of Shishu Mela, I was so fond of. Zoomobile ride had the same feeling minus the ghosts in the dark cave jumping towards you. There was a guide standing at the back of the train, who was introducing us to the landscapes and the zoo inhabitants as we were going past their enclosures. The good part about the zoo was that the animals were not confined in typical steel cages; rather they enjoyed enough open spaces around themselves, at the same time, the best possible replication of natural setting that they are used to. Some animals were seen through glass walls, with panoramic view.
Canadian domain had only a few animals, but all with a distinguishable characters. There were moose, Canada lynx, cougar, bald eagle, raccoon and grizzly bear. Moose are the largest member of the deer family. I found that it was a deer of the size of a horse. Lynx are medium sized wild cats. The big guy grizzly bear was probably in a very good mood that day. As we were gathering around, he suddenly pushed his ball which slipped into the small pond inside his cage and started to play with a giant sized ball. We spent nearly 10 minutes to see the display of the sporty bear.
We were so eager to see the animals that we never saw before. Giant Panda was on top of that list. Pandas are from China, so the next destination was the Eurasia region. The long queue next to the panda house suggested that not only us, but many people considered watching panda a thrilling experience. They were waiting to see Er Shun and Da Mao, the two adorable pandas who travelled all the way from China to stay as guests for five years in Toronto zoo.
Visitors were taking photos like crazy through the glass window. However, these two celebrity bears were indifferent at what's going on and kept on chewing bamboo, their favorite diet! The smaller version of panda, the red panda was also a part of the collection of the zoo. There was a flock of mountain goats (West Caucasian tur) on the other part of this region. Their name were perfect; most of them preferred sitting on the artificial hill made in their enclosure rather than sitting on the ground.
This region had other animals such as, two humped camel, snow leopard and domestic yak. There was a chance to ride a two-humped camel, which we resisted.
Next we went to Tudra trek region to see polar bear, there were two of them. The midday heat felt too much to one of them. He was swimming his nose drowned in the ice cool water. The other bear probably took its bath a few minutes ago. It was seen wandering under the sun. That gave us the best shot of the day: a cuddly white bear on the carpet of green grass under the blue sky.
Eventually, we finished visiting kangaroo, jaguar, giraffe, orangutan, ostrich, zebra and great Indian rhinoceros. We initially thought there was no rhino in its enclosure, because we only saw a bunch of rocks on the ground. Few minutes later we discovered that the big guy was sleeping in the hide of the rocks. Everyone's favourite penguin was about to start their mealtime. About 30 penguins gathering around the zookeeper for their fish, was a fun thing to watch. Before we got totally drained out we said hello to the hippo and tried to compare the Sumatran tiger to our Royal Bengal Tiger and bowed to her majesty the white lion.
In the end, we couldn't find anything we didn't like about the zoo. A return visit is a must. But it was time to wrap up and leave, we were tired too. My friend was driving back, so I had no problem to fall asleep.

The writer writes from
Montreal, Canada
Photo: Zubair Hossain






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