Children Make Juicy Problem at Animal Park

Someone tell the children at Miller Elementary School in Escondido that they can stop saving oranges for the gorillas and elephants at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

The animal park’s got more oranges than it knows what to do with--and it never wanted any oranges in the first place.

Let’s back up.

A Miller teacher was walking through the park one day recently, so the story goes, and stopped to chat with a regular park visitor at the elephant barn along the Kilimanjaro Trail.

The visitor remarked to the teacher that the elephants and primates weren’t getting as many oranges as they used to because of budget cutbacks. At least, the visitor said, that was the word from one of the elephant keepers.

That news distressed the teacher, who thought that because the Wild Animal Park had adopted Miller Elementary School, the least that Miller students could do was collect oranges at home for the elephants and primates.

The teacher called an education coordinator at the park who said that, yes indeed, elephants were getting fewer oranges these days.

So, the word was announced at Miller and sent home in newsletters: Collect citrus for critters, and monthly truckloads would be taken to the Wild Animal Park. Miller Elementary to the rescue!

The kids came through like champs. They scoured their backyards and their neighbors’ orange groves and easily filled the back of a pickup on Friday. A huge color photograph of the orange drive ran on the front page of the Escondido Times-Advocate on Sunday, prompting even more offers of orange donations.

The truck drove out to the Wild Animal Park’s forage warehouse, where worker Joe Clark looked rather nonplused by all the oranges. He graciously accepted them, but was a tad confused by the whole matter since he already had more oranges in the warehouse than he knew what to do with.

So, what gives?

Wild Animal Park spokesman Jeff Jouett explained:

“Apparently there was a misunderstanding at a meeting of keepers and curators a few weeks ago. It was mentioned that a nutritionist from Michigan State University had studied our animals’ diets and found that the elephants got enough Vitamin C from the sun and hay and don’t need to get it from oranges. So the keepers were told to cut back on the oranges because the elephants didn’t need them. It would just be an occasional treat.

“But the teacher was mistakenly told there was a budget cut and not enough oranges so, bless her heart, she wanted to come to the rescue,” Jouett said. “Joe in our forage warehouse already had a stockpile of oranges when the pickup pulled up, and now he’s got lots of oranges.”

“We’ve asked the school to please put their orange drive on hold. We told them we appreciate their spirit, but that we’ve got more oranges than an elephant could ever eat. They’ll never have scurvy or rickets. And our primates are just fine too,” Jouett said.

“Some oranges are showing up in the employee lunchroom, and we’re talking about selling orangeade on the grounds.”