Snow Days At the Zoo

Over the weekend New Bedford, Massachusetts was buried under a foot and a half of snow. How did the animals within the confines of the Buttonwood Park Zoo, many of them from warmer climates, weather the blizzard while the zoo was closed for two days?

"All the animals did very well during the storm," zoo director Keith Lovett told New Bedford radio WBSM. “Regardless, we give them extra bedding, and in some cases, access to indoor areas.”

Zoo staff kept their charges warm and fed. “Because of the nature of this storm, there were some species that normally are outdoors in the winter that we brought indoors, including the vultures, cranes, some small duck species, and our juvenile deer,” Lovett said.

Other animals – the bison, for example – were content to huddle up in a tight herd the way they would in the wild and wait out the storm.

Photo credit: Buttonwood Park Zoo