The Last Mile For Walk In The Wild Admission Will Be Free On Friday And Saturday

Rochelle Herron saw Spokane’s zoo Wednesday for the first time in a decade.

She couldn’t believe the change from the days when Walk in the Wild had no landscaping, no toilets and a few animals in pathetic cages.

“They’ve done a lot. It looks so nice,” said the mother of two from the Tri-Cities area. “We thoroughly enjoyed the bears, and the kids just loved it.”

The family had better treasure the memory.

After 23 years of struggling to keep the animals fed and the gates open, the Bermuda Triangle of zoos closes this week. It is closed today, but opens Friday and Saturday for a final two days, featuring free admission.

The reptiles already have been returned to their former owners or given to new ones. Many other animals will be shipped out as well.

But the zoo’s bears, cats, elk and other large animals will remain at the Valley site at least until June, when the Inland Northwest Zoological Society hopes they become the first exhibits for a zoo in North Idaho. A few staffers will care for the animals in the meantime.

Cedar Mountain Zoological Park, the planned zoo at Silverwood Theme Park, will open only if the society can raise $2 million for the first phase of construction in the next six months.

It would be “a completely new zoo,” proponents have promised.

They have good reason to try and distinguish the new zoo from the old.

In recent years, Walk in the Wild workers fixed fences, installed plumbing and added exhibits. Once common, reports of animals escaping or being injured became rare.

But supporters couldn’t fix the reputation of a zoo that Parade Magazine named one of the 10 worst in the nation in 1989.

During the particularly awful spring of 1992, several elk and a bear escaped, intruders stole snakes and a monkey, and crews building a fence broke a natural gas line.

“I’m starting to think somebody’s drawn a Bermuda Triangle around this place,” zoo employee Judith Gilmore said after the gas leak.

Gilmore once called a repair man to fix a copier gummed up with dead mice. She helped round up the monkeys when an employee noticed they were on top of the exhibit, not inside.

Former director Jack Hebner looked out his office window one day and noticed that a 2,000-pound bison bull named Buff had escaped its pen.

“And right in front of him, there is this child who is probably 18 months, maybe two years, patting it on the nose,” Hebner recalled. “Buff walked away and the little kid walked away, and I screamed at the keepers.”

Zoo attendance peaked at slightly more than 100,000 visitors a year in 1990 and ‘91, as Hebner added new animals faster than volunteers could build fences.

The decline started in 1992, when Hebner quit to run for county commissioner. His replacements - there were six of them in three years - vowed to fix up existing exhibits before adding more.

While the policy was praised by animal rights activists, zoo experts say new animals draw visitors. Attendance this year is half what it was during the Hebner years.

With attendance slumping, zoo officials saw hard-won community support crumble.

Few people responded last year when the zoo’s board of directors announced it would shut the doors unless backers pledged $1.4 million. The board eventually backed down from the threat, but by then, the zoo was doomed.

Inland Empire Paper Co., which for 23 years gave the zoological society free use of 80 acres along the Spokane River, said it was tired of being its landlord. The paper company said the zoo would have to vacate the property after county commissioners refused to take the land as a gift.

The paper company recently donated $100,000 so Walk in the Wild can repay the money it owes feed stores and other suppliers.

“We feel really good that we can close Walk in the Wild on this positive note, rather than having to carry that debt to the new zoo,” said zoo director Frances Drake.

Former employees say Spokane’s children will feel the loss of the zoo, even if their parents don’t.

“What a difference it makes for a kid to be able to reach out and touch an animal rather than see an 8-by-10 glossy,” Gilmore said.

Marilyn Omlor, who lost her zoo job earlier this month, said there’s little doubt Spokane needs a zoo.

During six years as a zoo volunteer and four years as an animal keeper, Omlor saw adults kiss cockatoos through the glass when they thought no one was looking. She heard countless visitors identify opossums as raccoons. She once heard a 4-year-old describe a flamingo as “a pink chicken” and had a grown woman ask whether the snake around her neck required batteries.

But the most exciting encounter came four days after Omlor was fired, when she was sitting in a Spokane restaurant. A boy who recognized her as the lady from the zoo told Omlor that after his class field trip, he decided to become a zoologist.

Omlor cries when she tells the story.

Herron, whose community has no zoo, wonders why there is so little uproar in Spokane.

“Everyone talks about how important it is for children to get a good education, but things like this are closing down and nobody fights for them,” she said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos

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This sidebar appeared with the story: LAST CHANCE TO VISIT Walk in the Wild zoo, which is closing after 23 years in the Spokane Valley, is open Friday and Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admission is free. Christmas lights will be displayed after dark.