And look who's here on time, and she even helped me this morning, Beth Heidore, Executive
Director of the Racine Zoo is here.
I was telling her I had this animal the other day when I was coming home.
I was driving on Main Street by 16th Street and this creature was sitting standing in the
road looking at me and wouldn't move.
And it wasn't a squirrel, it was, I didn't know what it was for sure, and it was just staring
at me and he wouldn't move.
And the more I yelled at him, the more he just looked at me, finally he moved, and I took
a picture of him in the grass, and you determined through your animal instincts and everything
you know about critters of the planet, and you decided to say, wood chuck.
How much wood would wood chuck chuck of a wood chuck, a chuck, a chuck, wood, that's a
great hug, right?
Yeah, very good.
Very good.
I never saw one around here before.
Oh my gosh, they're everywhere.
I know where they are, they're in the middle of Main Street, where they are, that I could
tell you.
Then I saw them the next day, like three of them.
Probably the babies.
Yeah, there's two adults in a baby running down Main Street again, and I said, move.
Did they listen to you this time?
Yeah, while they were on their way, but they moved real slow.
So the wood chuck, huh?
Okay.
Yeah, they're everywhere.
Yeah, I never saw them before.
I mean, I did now.
Yes, you did.
You know, if you really want to see wildlife, we have that little nature camera.
It runs in 10 second increments.
If you, if it starts movement, starts it, and we put it in the backyard, and we just
set it up there and then went to bed.
And the next day we pulled a little disc at it, a little thing out of it.
We plugged it into our TV, and there are critters running around our yard all night long.
Got possums going every which way, we got one cat just put his face right up to the
camera.
There's all different kinds of animals running around your backyard in the middle of
the night.
Right.
And when the sun comes up, they're gone.
Right.
And you can notice that in the winter too, because you see all these strange footprints,
and it's not going every which way in the backyard.
And they come out at night.
They were even up on our doorstep in the back, in our back, in the back porch, because
we had, you could see them on the video walking around up there, then they walk back down
again.
Where do they, where do they go during the daytime though?
Well, it depends on kind of animals there.
They're going to go take a nap and go, they're going to find a little, their spot to go
rest away from, you know, hidden.
So you can't see it.
One of our guys here saw a deer walking across Ohio the other day on our street right
here.
And I used to see them when I lived in brown deer.
I used to see them occasionally in the neighborhood early in the morning.
Mm-hmm.
Where do they go during the daytime?
Time.
I mean, deer's pretty big.
Yeah.
Where do they hide during the daytime?
They're going to be by vegetation that can hide them so that they feel, as long as they
feel comfortable, you know, they're going to, they can be by some bushes, by trees, you
know, you'd be amazed at probably what you can't see during the day when the animals
are taking their rest and hiding.
But you're figuring a residential neighborhood, where are these animals going?
Some of them are going to hide in someone's backyard.
Someone could hide by the back of a shed or something like that.
They find ways to, you know, nature is amazing.
They'll find ways to not have you see them.
And we invaded their neighborhood.
They didn't invade ours.
True.
That was true.
Okay, before we start with all the events, we had that big storm about two or three weeks
ago.
I lost a flagpole, little tiny flagpole.
I had, I told my insurance company, he said, how much?
It was about ten bucks, but, you know, I got to, I got to replace it.
Anyway, so that was my big thing and I just replaced it.
But I went to Win Point and near the zoo area and there were giant trees laying on fences
and luckily nobody's, and I didn't see any houses destroyed.
But I texted you because I know you got a lot of trees and so forth in that area.
What happened at the zoo during the storm?
Yeah, so we lost about ten big trees.
They'll be all off property after today.
It's taken a little while, but so ten big trees.
A couple of them fell on our south fence where our walkabout creek is.
And then we had one of the trees that's outside our fence line on the east side towards
the lake that fell into the zoo fence as well as on top of our storage semi.
So and then we lost a large tent for, yeah, 40 by 60 by 90 foot tent got destroyed.
We had, we almost had a tree fall on our zoo chew, but luckily it did not.
So we're good there.
And then it ripped up some awnings that were covering some spaces for the zebras and
the rhino.
We probably, all in all, if we added all together, we're in the 100, we're at about a hundred
thousand dollars.
Whoa.
So when you add that tent in there, which is a $40,000 tent.
Whoa.
So yeah, it was, we luckily no one got hurt, no animals got hurt, but it was, it was a
mess.
It was a mess that next day.
I know my neighbor's dog and my dog's too when the thunders outside get very upset.
The other day his pit bull, he couldn't fight.
She was hiding in the bathtub behind the shower curtain when the thunders started.
Do the animals of the zoo get upset with thunder?
You know, we have them all back a house.
So they're used to, I mean, that's a natural sound.
And even where they would live in the wild, you're going to hear some of those types of
things.
So it's not like it's never thundered here before, but they're in a pretty enclosed space
with some good sound proofing so that they, there is comfortable as possible.
Well, you know, and the other day, we, she's a pit bulls comes over and visit us every
Friday.
Because I don't know any dogs anymore, so she's my, we're the grandparents.
So she comes over and she was acting strange.
She was like hiding in the closet.
And about half hour later, it started the storm.
And I think animals can feel the barometric pressure because barometric pressure is amazing
if you're, my wife and I were reading about it for two hours one day.
And she can probably feel the pressure change to the lower pressure as she knows the storm's
coming.
I have a dog that does the same thing.
People don't do that.
That's not animals are so sorry.
They can tell us, you know, people that my trick foot, my trick me was telling me because
the barometric pressure changes.
Wow.
Okay.
Interesting.
Interesting.
He's at the zoo animals.
Animals are fabulous.
So a friend of mine said to me, what kind of animals they have there?
So they got lions and tigers.
No bears, oh my.
We have a bear.
We have an Indian bear.
Oh, you do have a bear.
Lions, tigers and bears.
Oh, my.
We do.
All right.
And don't giraffe, though, right?
We have giraffe.
We have giraffe.
Yeah.
Okay.
We still have shack.
Okay.
So he's just trying to feel his way about the outside, outside area since we got him in
November.
He came to us in November.
So he's just starting to feel comfortable outside.
So we'll get to the events.
I got to tell you, I have a couple of months ago on ABC World News.
They have this camera set, this eagle's nest.
I forget where it is in California, Northern California.
And you got to see the eggs laid and the mother and father were taking, because it was during
the winter.
So they had to keep the eggs warm and there were three of them, well, two hatched.
And they were little tiny, egglets, egglets, a little tiny furry things.
Well, now they're as big as their parents and it was time to fly the nest and ABC World
News had the camera there last night live.
We're watching.
And the first one spreaders with spreader wings.
Jenna wings, and I'm doing the studio spreader wings and then she pointed back and stepped
behind.
And the resistors spread her wings and she took off and she didn't return, right?
And sometimes they return sometimes and now she's on her own, starting her own family
with it.
And the other one just kind of huddled down again and didn't want to take that chance
of like, it must be scary.
All of a sudden you're going to take off, you don't know what's going to happen.
But it was and they had classes all over Northern California live watching this eagle
take off.
It is fun watching that.
And I'm at the, ooh, I wonder what they're going to take off.
Oh, I wonder what's going to happen.
They put this camera there and they obviously, you know, it's just lay in there.
They don't know what's there.
But it's just amazing watching these birds.
Yeah.
And the mother and father were there watching the bird take off.
It's like, go, go, go, go, go.
I'm going to push it.
Oh, they did it.
Oh, they did it.
Well, one did it.
The other one spread the wings.
Well, the other one went back off.
We're going to see tonight if it ever took off.
Okay.
Yes, the zoo is animals.
Yes, the zoo is a fun place to see them in the natural habitat.
How are the Arctic foxes doing weather?
Oh, they're doing great.
They've missed you.
They haven't seen you today.
Well, they're going to see me because I got to start walking again.
Okay.
So a lot of events going there.
Did you have the sleep over yet?
We did.
We just had one this last Friday night.
I had to go.
It went great.
It was a good scout group.
They had a good time.
Well, first of all, the weather was perfect.
It was.
The rain had stopped.
So they had a good night.
Wow.
Well, that's great.
And you do a body count and the head count was the same as when it got there.
It was.
It was.
It was.
It's always good when the head count matches coming and going.
Exactly.
Do they, do they roam around during the night?
I mean, young kids.
No, they're, they, there's lights out just like you would.
Yeah.
Doesn't mean anything.
It does.
We have, we have staff that we'll watch and their chaperones that's, that's required.
Okay.
So they can't just go roam around.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, kids are kids.
I understand that.
Very attentive education staff that is not going to let that happen.
All right.
Coming up Wednesday, I can't believe we're in June already.
Coming up in June, we've got three dates here out of the Y put June 18th, June 16th
in August, 27th in that order.
But once you tell us what's going on there, this is the world, war, wine, poor, where
that's that.
That's right.
So we used to have world wine Wednesdays and then we had rorn poor.
So we had wine tastings and beer tastings.
We're out of days for all of our events.
So we combined them together and we have world, war, wine, poor, Wednesdays.
That's good.
We have three of those one in June, which is the 18th.
That's kind of kicks it off.
They're all of that.
Oh, July, July 16th.
Yeah.
So there, there's one in each month, one in June, one July, one in August.
And it's six to eight.
It's on a Wednesday.
It's hump day.
We have unlimited samples of wine and beer.
And then red onion does hand pass appetizers.
And then we go around the zoo in different location.
So there'll be three different spots that we will do those this year.
And then we'll have an animal person come and talk.
And I mean, you're just kind of enjoying nature and enjoying the zoo with having some
wine and beer on hump day, but it works perfect.
Oh, that's good.
And where's it held?
It depends on.
So we usually will do one at, but the north end will do one somewhere around penguins
and mere cats.
And we'll do someone probably either in the front of the castle or down by walk about.
It really kind of depends on what's happening and where we want to do it.
That particular night, penning, penning upon what's going on with this walk about with
those kangaroos.
It is.
I tell you, I was not ready for that when I walked in there and they're right there, and
they crossed right in back of me.
They waited till I and I couldn't believe how big the legs are in those, I ain't legs
on those kangaroos.
When you see them in TV and movies, they look big when you see them in person and they
really do jump.
They do.
They do.
And they're right next to them.
They just waited for me to cross and I saw them all staring and they jumped over the
road.
They can come on the sidewalk.
You can't go in their grass.
Yeah.
And they know that they do know that.
And so yeah, just it was just I never saw how big those legs were before and just staring
at them.
I know, right?
So that's the, this is a real tongue question.
The World Roar Wine Poor.
Yep.
And again, the three dates are June 18th, July 16th in August 27th, 6 to 8 p.m.
And how do you sign up for that?
So you're going to go to our website, recinesu.org.
There's a bar at the top and go to the one that says events.
Do the drop down menu.
Go down to World War Wine Poor Wednesday and you can sign up for one, two or all three
of them.
And it works great.
We have a lot of people that have come since we've started those 10 years ago and they've
become a little family.
They all booked themselves.
We get some fire pits out there and people just come and enjoy the wine and beer.
And get good attendance, huh?
Yeah, anywhere from 50 to 100 people.
I never had a beer in my life.
I tasted it once.
No, wine I had, but the beer I never, I for some reason, I don't know why.
It never came up for discussion.
So I tasted it once and no, no, no, you know you've done.
And it seems like everybody's enjoying it except me and I look at people, I mean, you're
a good time.
I'm going to come home, get a refreshing beer.
Well, it looks refreshing.
It really does, but I don't know.
Okay, we've got a round for wine, a for winos for rhinos.
Could be that, too, yeah, around for rhinos.
Yes.
That is our annual God tournament.
You got all these alliterations in here itself.
I know.
They're fun.
Okay.
It is on Monday, June 23rd.
It's at Meadowbrook Country Club.
We have a T off time at two o'clock in the afternoon.
We actually do.
This is a nine hole tournament for everybody.
There's fun games on the course.
We'll have the front nine in the back nine at Meadowbrook.
We do have a few spots for some for some.
So this is beautiful time of the year.
You may not want to or don't think about coming to the zoo to support it, but you want
to support us, but you're a golfer.
So come to the golf tournament.
There's something for everybody at the zoo.
It works great.
We got a fun swag bag.
Get your for some ready.
If you, we still have some whole sponsorship opportunities.
It's a really great day.
You can work all morning, be there for registration at one o'clock in the afternoon and play the
round.
Have a great dinner.
So be home by 730.
It's a perfect opportunity.
This is not not put put go.
This is not put put go.
This is not put put go is I am good on the wing no hole in the clown hole, but I don't
know if I can.
Right.
I don't know how they hold the golf clubs.
I tried it once and it's it's not like a baseball bat.
It is not.
That is a true statement and I didn't hit the ball once, but it didn't go in the air kind
of rolled and you can't but did it stay straight.
It was on a driving range.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it just went down there.
I mean, it didn't kill anybody.
It didn't hit anybody.
Okay.
That was good.
That's great.