I don't get it.....

Just read on the Zoo site, that the baby lions are all dead!

Nobody knows what happened, nobody kept an eye on the pride, there were no camera's, and there was nowhere where the lioness could safeguard her cubs............... I don't know if it was ignorance or not-caring, but somehow, this doesn't feel right for a zoo? It stated in a Saturday post that there hadn't been any sign of life since the keepers came to work on Friday Morning.....?
I guess it should have rang alarm bells, when they didn't know that she was pregnant, even though they sent out a newsletter with a picture of the mating......... Last year, they were surprised by the birth of 2 of the 3 giraffe calves. I'm not making this up, it's in their newsletter. It gave me the creeps when it happily states in the announcement that "the mother was pacing all day Wednesday and part of Thursday, often with one of the cubs in her mouth" and it was put down as if she was proudly showing off her little ones.......?!?!
I'm thinking she was looking for a place to put them safe. No matter how "respectful" the rest of the pride is.... every nature documentary I've seen always had the new mom take distance from the pride until the cubs were atleast 2 or more weeks old. You'd think if I can figure this out, the powers that run the zoo, should have for sure?  You need a degree in Animal Care to volunteer keeping the cages clean, so you'd think somebody would have had ideas for the safety of mom and babies?
I guess accidents happen, nature takes its course, and all those other platitudes, but we're not talking baby ducks here. In my humble opnion, with it being her first litter, and the pride only being together a year, they should have had a little bit more precaustions/surveillance than locking up at night, and calling it good?  Just saying....

I read some of the comments, and I think they're going to have a heck of a time living this down. They've been awarded "best zoo" for the last 3 years, although for the amount of animals they house, they seem to have a lot of deaths. But I have to be honest, I wouldn't know how many animals the other zoo's loose in the course of a year, because I don't go to their sites as often and when I do, I just skim the highlights. It just seems a lot.  There's people that were commenting that they would never, EVER set foot in the zoo again, people that were thinking of putting the animal protection agency on them, people comparing them with the Copenhagen zoo. etc. Me? I don't know what I'm going to do. I just renewed my membership thru july 2015 in February, so..... I'm dissappointed, disgusted and incredulous, a little mad, (OK, make that a lot mad) but I also don't have all the facts. I hope that they learned, be it at the expense of helpless animals (no matter how many sharp implements they have, they can not act like they would in the wild) and it won't happen again. That next time they have little ones, no matter what species, they will have a keeper in the area at all times, or at least camera surveillance with someone keeping tabs and ready to intervene if need be, that they will be prepared to separate the mom and baby(s) from the other animals until they stand a chance of survival and they figure out that animals in a cage behave differently from their wild cousins ........... As for the Stockholm zoo thing....... If you know there are enough animals of a certain sub-species, the responsible thing to do, if you're acting on behalf of the animals, and not the shareholders, is not to breed them, so you don't GET to the point of having too many of one gene pool? One article almost made it sound like they were growing their own meat for the predators in the zoo, but I somehow have a hard time believing that one.

Ok, stepping off the soapbox now :-) and I'll be back with updates in a day or so. Mike is off tomorrow, and has called dibs on the computer, so it will probably be Saturday or tomorrow night after hubby goes to sleep. LOL. Looking forward to Digital Scrapbooking Day, and will spend tomorrow updating/checking and narrowing down things on my wishlist, checking the bank account, and probably narrowing down a little more, or maybe I'll just play/pick up freebies on Saturday :-)  We'll see, and when done with that...... there's always ZOO TYCOON! LOL Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that I would enjoy playing computergames this much. I'll have to figure out how to make screenshots, so I can show you "my" zoo, someday.....

Don't forget to hug a loved one? And if you have fuzzy roommates, hug them extra tight :-)