Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 5, 1991 TAG: 9103050074
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But there was this turkey vulture flapping around behind Ewert, and the message about the barnyard of yore was pre-empted by the vulture's wrinkly red head and beady scavenger's eyes.
From what I could tell, the vulture was not interested in Bern Ewert, or Beth Poff or Rupert Cutler. Vultures specialize in dead meat. Neither Ewert, Poff nor Cutler qualifies.
The Mill Mountain Zoo, where this vulture was licking its bird lips, may be another story.
They, the humans, were restating their vows, heralding an epoch of renewed cooperation between the Explore park and the Blue Ridge Zoological Society, hailing the marriage as a union that would help breathe new life into two moribund bodies.
The society, which is the zoo, is going to work more actively with Explore. Beth Poff, who directs the zoo, will help Explore plan which animals to put in its zoo. She will help establish the old Old MacDonald exhibit at Explore by locating and choosing the old cows, pigs and chickens - just like grandfather's grandfather's grandfather might have had on his pioneer farm.
Dairy farmers, chicken farmers and hog farmers may find it fascinating. The rest of us, though, may not give much of a darn about what a chicken looked like 200 years ago. Most of us prefer giraffes.
Mill Mountain zookeepers would tend Explore's historic hens and hogs.
Beth Poff says this is a good step for the zoological society.
It may be.
But there's this problem of the vulture, flapping in on great black vulture wings while Poff is speaking and lighting on the screened roof of the zoo's vulture pen. Inside are some captive vultures and their plateful of captive-vulture chow. The free vulture has come to lust after the captive's grub.
That, at least, was the buzzard's literal mission. The figurative mission here was to preside over the zoo's final throes.
While the zoo was busily announcing its broadened horizons, Ruby the tiger sat in the corncrib that's been her home for more than two years. The zoo hasn't been able to raise enough money to build her a bigger habitat. Yet another set of plans for a yet further scaled-down Ruby exhibit may be revealed this week.
The zoo still can't finish an extraordinarily modest beaver exhibit, made mostly of treated lumber. It was to have been done last August. That was postponed until last November. Now, it's anybody's guess.
The zoo's expansion plans were dealt a lethal blow by severe restrictions imposed on Mill Mountain development by the city, at the suggestion of consultants, last year.
Since it can't expand, raise serious money or complete its own modest goals, the zoo has assumed an even greater challenge. How does that figure?
The Explore park offers the zoo a link, however tenuous, to the future, something that may not exist on the mountain.
Keep an eye on that vulture.
by CNB