San Antonio Zoo

The Great Flamingo Wrangler Event
of October 1, 2019

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wrangler n (ca. 1515)

Western U.S.

The Story: The San Antonio Zoo is a major captive breeding source for flamingos in the world. In the Fall of 2019 they had a new large collection of juvenile flamingos. They were about the size of adults, but with gray rather than pink color. More important, they were shy and not yet ready to be intermingled with adults. The staff had created a new fenced-in area for these juveniles that was beside a similar area holding adults. The idea was to get the juveniles accustomed to adults but still separated from them. The juveniles were currently housed in an area at some distance from what would be their new area. The staff just needed to transport the young flamingos to the new area. Normal transport would put each flamingo in a carrying box, and release them at the new location. That was going to take forever and would be stressful for the youngsters. Flamingos will sort of go where they are directed, so a plan was hatched to herd the whole group from the old area to the new. They thought it would work, but they weren't sure. The zoo made this into an event where members were invited, but not many people showed up. I was there and took a sequence of video clips. They had a number of zoo staff to help with the transfer. Anyway, the transfer event went even better than they expected. They didn't have much trouble with some of them straying off, or even trying to escape. The word "wrangler" isn't just for horses and ponies.

The images below are in the order of the wrangle. Clicking on a picture gives a larger version. Each picture is the first image in the video. The last five pictures show the juveniles beside and to the right of the adults.