It Was Just Too Darned Hot for Man or Beast

Betty Krugielki came down from Covina on Tuesday so she and her son Chris could visit the San Diego Wild Animal Park. She figured that since it was the day after Labor Day and with most vacationing families having returned home, they’d surely beat the crowds.

They did, but they didn’t beat the heat.

They were two of only 935 people (count ‘em, 935) who ventured into the famed animal preserve in the San Pasqual Valley east of Escondido on Tuesday, where the temperature at midday reached 104 degrees.

But what the hay--it was the coolest day of the past four.

Did What They Had to Do

Indeed, it was a day when the animals outnumbered the visitors nearly 3 to 1, and man and beast alike did what they had to do to cope with the blistering temperatures.

Humans strolled leisurely through water misters that sprayed a cooling, light rain in the Australian Rain Forest, in a bamboo thicket near the gorilla enclosure and in the waiting line for the Wgasa monorail--although there wasn’t a line to speak of.

Most of the animals lay languid in the shade, or hunkered down in mud flats, or stood directly over irrigation sprinklers, like kids drawn to an open fire hydrant.

It wasn’t a real active place, the Wild Animal Park on Tuesday, but no one seemed to mind.

“It’s this hot back home, but it’s a lot drier here,” said Maryann Johnson of Atlanta. “This isn’t so bad.”

“It feels a lot like home,” said Bob Novascone, who came to the Wild Animal Park with his daughter and two grandchildren from Scottsdale, Ariz. “But the difference is, at least here you’ve got the beach.”

“Isn’t this the perfect day to be here?” asked Joan Warren of Riverside, who came to the park with her son before his school year starts Thursday. “There are no lines. I love it!”

Aside from those who were paid to be there, there didn’t seem to be any San Diegans at the Wild Animal Park at midday Tuesday; all seemed to be visitors from outside the county, squeezing in one last vacation stop.

Compared to last year’s Labor Day weekend--when temperatures were in the high 80s on Saturday and Sunday and jumped to 97 degrees on Labor Day itself--crowds at the park this year were down for each day.

Saturday’s attendance was 7,445, in 109-degree heat; Sunday’s was 5,417, in 108-degree heat, and Monday’s was 2,832, in 105-degree temperatures. The three-day total this past weekend was 13,694, contrasted with 19,951 during the same period last year.

Even more bothersome to park officials was that the Charlie Daniels Band performed free Saturday and Sunday--an attraction that officials hoped would double the park’s attendance over the previous year. Officials wondered how low the attendance would have been without the free concerts.

Only a relatively few people over the weekend needed first aid because of the heat, including two who asked to be taken off the photo caravan truck that takes serious photographers into the animal exhibits in late afternoon for close-up views of the wildlife.

“The drivers were asked by their passengers to drive through the sprinklers, and they did,” said Randy Rieches, animal services manager at the park.

Rieches said most employees, especially those used to working in the field, had little difficulty coping with the heat.

“Once you get over 95, hot is hot and it doesn’t make much difference if it’s 100 or 110,” he said. “Most of us ate our lunches outside, because we didn’t want to go into the air conditioning and have to go out again.