Wild Things Roam These Trails

BY KATHERINE CALOS - Staff Writer
Published: August 20, 2008

Check our photos
of the Metro Richmond Zoo [2008]

Charlotte Clark has learned a thing or two about a giraffe.

“It had long legs and a long neck,” said the 3-year-old at the Metro Richmond Zoo. “It had a long tongue, too. I feeded the food to him. It tickled.”

The zoo was a natural adventure for the Clark family while visiting grandparents Jack and Karen Morrow in Midlothian. It offered teaching moments in unexpected ways.

“Monkeys are allowed to stick out their tongue,” Charlotte volunteered during a picnic lunch with parents Elizabeth and Paul Clark and siblings Katherine, 5, and Phillip, 1.

“She was telling the monkey he was rude,” Grandpa Morrow explained. 

Not Exactly Secret

The Metro Richmond Zoo isn’t entirely a secret, because it gets 200,000 visitors a year. That leaves about a million other people in the metro area with a lot to discover.

The zoo, which started as Jim Andelin’s backyard collection, has grown into a 70-acre site that holds about 1,200 animals. All in all, the zoo has about 155 different species, 28 of which are different kinds of monkeys. There are rheas and rhinos, pythons and penguins, giraffes and gazelles, lions and leopards, tigers and tamarins, bears and budgies, camels and chimps.

“We love the zoo,” said Shannon Castelo of Chesterfield, who said she was running a week-long “Camp Castelo” at her home for her children, Jefferson, 6, and Hannah, 8, and their cousins, Taitum Seay, 6, and Raeann Seay, 7, of Fredericksburg. “It’s a fun place to take your guys during the day and learn a few things,” she said. “You can have fun and learn, so it’s the best of both worlds.”

Ask the “campers” which animals were their favorites and expect to wait a while for them to run through the list.

“I like the rhinos.”
“I like the giraffes.”
“I like the flamingos.”
“I like the parrot.“
“I like the prairie dogs.”
“I like the emus, too.” 

What About the Monkeys?

They didn’t even mention the monkeys. Babies at play added to the appeal of squirrel monkeys and Diana monkeys. Hand-reared gibbons and a chimp were doing acrobatics before a group of giggling kids at their exhibit.

“We have over 200 primates. It’s one of the largest collections in the country,” Andelin said. “It kinda just happened. I really like the primates.”

The whole zoo evolved in a similar way.

“I was raised on a farm and had a lot of animals. I enjoyed it. It taught me how to work,” Andelin said. “I wanted my kids to have some responsibilities, but where I lived, I didn’t have much land for cows and horses.” He started with birds, added some fallow deer, then a kangaroo and monkeys. Each of the children had daily chores.

When one son was in second grade, his teacher didn’t believe that he had monkeys as pets, so Andelin showed up at school with a monkey. That led to a field trip by his son’s class. Other teachers wanted to bring their students, too, which led to organized field trips starting in 1988.

“I would go to work building houses, come back at 10 a.m. for the school bus and go back to work,” he said. After a neighbor filed a zoning complaint, Andelin moved his zoo to the current site in 1994 and had room to expand. “I saw there was a need for people to see these animals,” he said, so he opened to the public.

“My family started this from scratch,” he said, “but it’s at the level where it can stand alone as a zoo.” 

A Familiar Pattern

W.C. “Pat” Quinn, who founded The Zoo of Northwest Florida, said the Richmond zoo follows a common pattern. Quinn was the first chairman of the Zoological Association of America, the organization that accredited the Richmond zoo.

“That’s how all zoos started,” Quinn said. “It always took somebody with an entrepreneurial spirit who could make private decisions on his own. It’s always private collections that were turned over to the city or society in perpetuity.

“Jim Andelin has done a wonderful job with that facility. He has some really interesting and important genetic material in his primates there.”

Andelin’s plans aren’t finished yet. This summer he added a safari train ride through a new 8-acre enclosure with gemsbok, gazelles, kudu, eland, waterbuck, nyala and ostrich mingling together. He built an aviary for colorful budgies, with people allowed to enter and hand-feed the birds seeds from a Popsicle stick. He brought in a coconut climb that works like a climbing wall.

One day he’d like to have pygmy hippos in one of his ponds. He knows the water supply from the wells and creeks on his property is too limited for a full-size hippopotamus. He doesn’t plan to have elephants because they require too much in facilities and feed.

“I do a lot of research on their needs and nutrition before I bring an animal in,” he said.

Interaction is a key feature of the Metro Richmond Zoo, both among the animals and between the animals and people.

Many of the animals live in family groups or with compatible species.

“Guests comment on how active the animals are here,” he said. “Granted, they do have to lay down, but we have family groups, youngsters who play with their older brothers. It looks better to see nine giraffes versus two giraffes.”

Interaction with the public often involves treats. Food pellets that appeal to almost every critter are available by the cupful. 

Treats for the Tall

For the giraffes, guests can stand on a bridge that’s as high as a giraffe’s head and hold out a hand with food for the giraffe. For the camels, visitors can drop pellets in a long tube that carries the food to a trough. Even Jojo the orangutan had a system for getting fed. He stood at the edge of his island and fished out pellets that guests tossed across the moat to him.

Andelin hopes the zoo experience offers visitors food for thought, too. Possibly, they’ll be inspired to work on causes that benefit animals, such as reducing pollution and protecting habitats.

“Until you’ve actually made eye contact with an animal, you don’t have the same appreciation for it,” he said. “If you’ve never gained an appreciation of an animal, you’re not as likely to get behind protecting and saving them in the wild.”

IF YOU’RE GOING TO THE ZOO

Location: 8300 Beaver Bridge Road, off Hull Street Road, about 8 miles west of Route 288.

Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Closed Sunday.

Admission: $9.75 for adults; $7.75 for children ages 2-11; annual pass, $29 for adults, $23 for children. Train rides and coconut climbing cost $3 each.

Details: www.metrorichmondzoo.com or (804) 739-5666.