Costa Mesa : Serval at Zoo to Serve as Mascot for Schoolchildren

A gang from Costa Mesa has left its mark in Los Angeles.

The Garfield Gang, a group of first- and second-grade students at College Park Elementary School, have been performing chores at home and donating the quarters they receive in return to a fund to sponsor a class mascot at the Los Angeles Zoo.

Their choice, a 35-pound serval (an African wildcat), will replace a tabby named Garfield who made their classroom her home for three years before she was run over last December, leaving the school with “57 hysterical kids and wacko teachers,” said teacher Cathy Blue. “It was devastating to the class. They just didn’t know how to handle it.”

Blue said that her students had taken turns feeding and caring for 18-pound Garfield and that he used to sleep on the children’s shoulders during class.

“The importance is to teach children at a young age the reverence for life, that they must be able to take care of it. They must realize the importance of caring, supporting and maintaining an animal. It’s not something that is just a short whim, but one that lasts as long as its life,” she said.

The class soon decided to sponsor a replacement, a serval, for one year at a cost of $250. The students will sponsor it on their own by washing dishes, taking out the trash and cleaning their rooms. Most students bring in about 25 cents each week. At the end of the year, any surplus will be donated to the Humane Society, Blue said.

The gang, clad in “Wildlife Saver” T-shirts and Garfield buttons, boarded a bus and met their strange-looking companion for the first time last week. “They were absolutely ecstatic,” Blue said. But they were surprised at the sight of the giraffe-necked, cat-faced animal that has both long and short paws, spots and stripes. “They said he looked like he was made of spare parts,” she said.