Tiger Cub Gets Birthday Party! - New Post, Bumped from February 16, 2014

Finally getting back to this!  So sorry to anyone who has been waiting Three Months for this!  I will also bump it up to the front of the blog.  At least I came here and was happy to see I put the photos on! Will add a couple more, plus you can see the others here:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/leo811_sf

So, Jillian's First Birthday!   So, happy that she got a party!  If you read my blogs, you know I'm obsessive about the Zoo Friends Birthdays.  I think they should all be celebrated in some way, not all have to be a huge Party, but they deserve a Special Treat and a Mention and aside from the Farm Friends, the rest of the Animals that live at the Zoo get nothing.  No Special Treat, No Mention on their Social Media sites.  NADA :(  ... I must say that I don't think Jillian would have gotten anything either, if I hadn't mentioned it   

( "...will they have a Celebration for Jillian the Sumatran Tigers First Birthday February 10th?  <cough, hint>" )  

in a previous blog post 

http://iamnotananteater.blogspot.com/2014/01/happy-birthday-gladys-cincinnati.html  

That all said, her Mama Skylar/"Leanne" is turning Eleven on July 10.   Just saying.

The production for Jillian's Birthday was pretty good.  Of course there would be an effort as they had Media there.  Thankfully, the Public wasn't shut out in order for Media to have priority viewing (which yes has been done before).

Here's a wide angle of the Party layout.  There was an Ice Cake, Gift Bags, Streamers, and a Bubble Pond.  I was most impressed by the Bubble Bath Pond :)  I had seen this recently from another Zoo and thought "what fun"!   There were a couple things I wasn't impressed by, which will be noted below the photos.  But, I was happy that there was a Celebration and most of all, Jillian and Sky had a wonderful time!  The Animals enjoyment is all that matters and I had fun watching them have so much fun :)  

 

You can see by this photo, it was all good!

Love the happy here!

I want to see this on all the Animals faces.

The Cake made for a great photo op, but fell short of being anything Fun or Enrichment for the Cats. It was just colored Ice. WTH?  Serious Laziness.  Why make an Ice treat that has no flavor?  One layer could have been Milk, another Blood, another something else.  After the initial sniff this thing was left to melt, it served no purpose other than it looked good. 

Another Lazy and curious thing was the Party Bags. One had food in it, the other had a rock.  Yes, a Rock!  Again, WTH?  These Animals eat a good amount during the day.  The former Big Cat Keeper Barb, would save portions of their daily food to use for Enrichment Toys.  There should have been Meat in all the Bags.

While the food treats proved to be a Fail, the Streamers, and chasing thru them was not!

And the Bubble Bath was the biggest hit, 

once Jillian threw caution aside and jumped in!