Results tagged “brookfieldzoo”

For the first time in its 74-year history, the Brookfield Zoo closed Sunday after its animal habitats sustain serious storm damage. The zoo reopened yesterday, but several exhibits are still closed today, but the zoo itself has reopened. According to the zoo's press release, aAnimals not on exhibit include the big cats and bears...Mexican gray wolves, dolphins, sea lions, seals, as well as the entire Fragile Kingdom exhibit." [Chicago Zoological Society]

There is a new baby giraffe at Brookfield Zoo. The six-foot-tall male calf, born August 15, weighed 150 pounds at birth and is a welcome addition to the zoo’s Habitat Africa exhibit, which now has five giraffes. Giraffe Calf Facts: A new calf grows rapidly – sometimes up to an inch a day – and by 6 months will be fairly independent of its mother. Scientists have estimated that only 25 percent of infant giraffes survive their first year of life.

More on the stingray incident at Brookfield Zoo: the "Sharks at Stingray Bay" exhibit remains closed after temperature controls on a 16,000 gallon saltwater tank skizzed out on Monday morning. Sixteen stingrays died as a result of water temperatures rising to almost 90 degrees - 10 degree above normal. A San Diego-based company called Living Exhibits created and manages the temporary exhibit at the zoo. Company president Mike Yeakle, Brookfield Zoo, and ComEd are all working together to investigate the cause of the malfunction. One possibility is that the tank overheated when a power supply fluctuation triggered the tank's heaters. Prior to the accident, the exhibit contained 33 stingrays, eight sharks, and three horseshoe crabs. [Trib, CBS2]

You know what we need today? Yeah you do. Some things that are awesome.

It's no secret that we're big fans of pigs here at Chicagoist (especially the mini variety). So of course we're going to be celebrating National Pig Day today at Brookfield Zoo. Started in 1972 by two sisters in North Carolina (where they also love their pigs), the day was set aside to honor the smart and tasty barnyard beast.

It's not nipple-killingly cold today, and it's supposed to be sort of decent this weekend, with highs in the 30s. Whee!

Did the president of Medill use made-up quotes in a newsletter? We...barely care. What really bugs us is journalists citing the existence of Facebook group as some kind of indicator of anything--"students and alumni joined the new 'Save Journalism at Medill' group on Facebook. On Tuesday afternoon, there were nearly 90 members ...." There are 650 fulltime students at Medill. Fewer than 90 of them . Agh, not news. [Trib]

Ow, my heart. A still-unnamed Humboldt Penguin chick is being raised by zookeepers rather than its parents because the little guy (or girl) wasn't growing fast enough.

Barack Obama continues to try to put a distance between himself and the shady Tony Rezko, giving more Rezko money to charity. Or as the Sun-Times puts it, "Barack Obama on Tuesday night aimed to scrub Tony Rezko's taint."

Today's must-read: The Reader's Whet Moser discovers the Chicago Tribune was not such a big Martin Luther King fan back in the day.

So the Sun-Times is laying off reporters, but it still has the money to run a moronic article about presidential candidates' sexiness? John Edwards is "not exactly wet-T-shirt sexy, but it still sets a few hearts aflutter," Rudy Giuliani is "now rather frigid," John McCain is "a far cry from a sexy man in uniform," Hillary Clinton has "stripped herself of the trappings of sexuality and femininity," Mike Huckabee "Preacher. Moving right along...," Mitt Romney's "tendency to flip-flop on certain issues belies his discomfort with sexuality," and Barack Obama "exudes the most sex appeal of the bunch." [S-T]

If you’re lucky, your toddler will be asleep, blissfully unaware when the last minutes of 2007 tick by. An earlier bed time doesn’t mean that he or she has to miss out on the festivities, though; a handful of places in and around Chicago are hosting New Year’s Eve parties for the little ones, with dancing, snacks and party favors at an earlier countdown.

For a sizable chunk of the US population, Christmas is a time for... wondering when it's going to be the 26th. Jews have the stereotypical routine of Chinese food and a movie (Chicagoist has deemed Charlie Wilson's War the family-friendly-but-still-interesting-enough-not-to-bore-dad-who-likes-foreign-films movie of the season), but what to do for the rest of the day?

Alas, Hansel, the 53-year-old male hippo at the Brookfield Zoo was euthanized yesterday after his caretakers decided his arthritis was so severe that it was ruining his quality of life. Hansel had been at the zoo for 51 years, after moving here with his sidekick Gretel--really--from Denmark. The two had six hippo kids, and one of their daughters, 39-year-old Wicket, is still at Brookfield.

Where Can I See the Best Christmas Lights in the City?

We thought we'd been hearing jugbands downtown recently, and now we know we have: River otters are making a comeback in Chicago waterways. According to the Chris Anchor, chief biologist for Cook County (jobs we didn't know existed: that one), "Almost all the watersheds in Cook County have otters. They're everywhere...there's definitely otters downtown." No one's sure exactly why the otters have re-emerged, but the Brookfield Zoo and Forest Preserve District will be tagging...