Remember the two newest penguin chicks that recently hatched at Woodland Park Zoo? Turns out one of them likely wouldn’t have survived if a sharp-eyed zoo visitor hadn’t seen its egg.
From the zoo:
On April 3 while the first egg was hatching, the young boy, while enjoying the penguin exhibit, alerted the keeper that he could see an egg on a cliff in the exhibit. The keeper, Celine Pardo, immediately followed the boy’s instructions and scooped up the egg. The egg was rushed indoors and relocated under a pair of foster parents; it hatched on April 5.
By the time Pardo rescued the egg and returned to the exhibit to personally thank the boy, he had already left the exhibit. The boy is described as 7 or 8 years old with blonde, curly hair; he was wearing a white t-shirt and was extremely polite. “We are so grateful to this little boy for helping us save this precious bird. If a crow or seagull had scooped up the egg, it would have been a goner,” said Pardo. “We’d like to find him and extend an invitation to go behind the scenes to meet the chick and help name it. This story of this chick shows how visitors of all ages can help support the care of animals at the zoo and, in this case, help save an endangered animal.”
The two chicks hatched to 4-year-old mother Sardinia and 9-year-old father Groucho and currently weigh between 9 and 11 oz.
The penguin chick from that rescued egg gets a check-up yesterday. Photo by Dennis Dow, Woodland Park Zoo.
