Central Florida Zoo a lark after dark
There’s not as much noise as you might imagine. Maybe the crickets are wary of their neighbors. In any case, my whole tour group is able to silently listen. And then we hear it. “Meow.” That adorable vocalization comes from the enormous mouth of Boone, a 100-plus-pound cougar at the Central Florida Zoo. These are the kind of unique moments you get treated to on the zoo’s Night Hike, an after-hours tour of the grounds and its more nocturnal inhabitants.
“The Night Hike is probably my favorite event all year,” says our tour guide Merle. “It lets you see another side to things.”
She’s right. The zoo changes character in the dark. Aside from the aforementioned silence, there is a mystery to walking past the darkened cages. Divided into groups of roughly six, we carry flashlights wrapped in red cellophane to keep from blinding the animals. We point them toward the ground most of the time, only lifting them when Myrtle tells us. COMMENTARY
Do you know what a fossa is? Adults tend not to be familiar, but kids know it from featuring in cartoons such as “Madagascar” and “Wild Kratts.” It’s a cross between a long cat and a mongoose, hailing from Madagascar. And it’s one of the animals that gets more active at night.
Some of the best night animals have to be brought out by handlers for us to get the best look, such as the charming screech owl or the delightful hedgehog. Also the scorpion, who glowed under the blacklight, and the boa constrictor. Many of the night animals are ones you might not see intentionally.
And some of them don’t come out at all. Our guide had us wait for the giraffes (which apparently look like sentient palm trees in the dark), but they decided to keep their long necks in for the evening.
But nothing dampened the spirits of the kids as they ran from exhibit to exhibit and absorbed each new fact with a “Whoa.”
The next Night Hike won’t be until March, but there are a few ways to see a different side of the zoo before that. Saturday will be Kids Night Out, a kids-only tour with crafts and games (6:30-10 p.m., $30, ages 5-12). For a more adult evening, Oct. 18 will be the last Sunset at the Zoo for the season. It’s a happy hour with live music that puts the tail in cocktail (5:30-7:30 p.m., $5, 21 and older).
There are plenty of daytime events coming up as well. Visit centralflorida zoo.org for more details. And maybe you too can hear a cougar mew.