It Was a Zoo--on Roads, Inside Gates, Behind Bars

Eager to ogle the animals without paying the price, more than 48,000 people--a record number--flocked to the San Diego Zoo on Monday for admission-free Founders’ Day.

They came early--by 7 a.m., the first early birds had set up lawn chairs to await the opening of the zoo gates at 9 a.m. By 10:30 a.m., the parking lot was full. All day, more visitors kept arriving--so many that zoo officials opted to close the gates an hour later than usual, at 5 p.m.

“People are still pouring in,” Jeff Jouett, the zoo’s chief spokesman, said late Monday afternoon.

When the last head was counted, 48,103 people had crossed the park’s threshold. The previous attendance record was in 1986, when 39,033 people took advantage of Founders’ Day, an annual tribute to the zoo’s founding fathers and mothers, to tour the park free of charge.

For those visitors who had hoped to escape the pressures of humanity, however, the zoo on Monday may have been a disappointment. Crowds around the animal enclosures were shoulder-to-shoulder. Lines were long. Outside the park, zoo-related traffic backed up on California 163.

“It’s been really a well-behaved crowd,” said Jouett who said that, all in all, the day had gone off without a serious hitch.

About 50 children lost their parents in the hubbub, he said, and paramedics were called three times.

“A couple of people passed out, whether from the heat or the crowds, I don’t know,” Jouett said.

The animals, meanwhile, happily observed some oddities of human behavior, Jouett said. For, despite huge signs prohibiting it, many zoo visitors seemed intent on throwing their food.

“There was higher than normal incidence of people feeding the animals,” he said.