The Bronx Zoo's 'Boo at the Zoo'

If animals could speak, certainly they would ask to participate in Halloween. "We're already dressed up," they would say. "As animals."

Many zoos around the country have answered this hypothetical request by offering Halloween-themed exhibits and activities during the season. A partial list includes:

• San Diego Zoo
• Brookfield Zoo in Chicago
• St. Louis Zoo
• Houston Zoo
• Cleveland Metroparks
• Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay
• Denver Zoo
• Phoenix Zoo
• North Carolina
• Philadelphia Zoo
• Seattle Zoo

Of course, if your local zoo isn't on the list, just check out its Web site and see if it is participating in the festivities.

New York's Bronx Zoo has for the past decade participated in the hair-raising holiday with their Boo at the Zoo spooktacular. During the month of October, the zoo's staff scatters square bales of hay, corn husks, and pumpkins around the grounds, and garnishes all of it with fake spiders, plastic skulls, cobwebs, and other Halloweeny items.

This year, the zoo offers several activities for those who have the courage to go on a haunted hay ride, explore a scary safari, or see some animals having fun with pumpkins. So last weekend, I headed to the Bronx Zoo to face my fears and perhaps get my face painted.


I first visited the Haunted Safari, which the zoo constructed inside the World of Darkness, a building that used to house bats, caiman, porcupines, and some primates until it was shut down earlier this year due to budget constraints. Judith Frimer, Director of Marketing for the Wildlife Conservaiton Society's Bronx Zoo, describes the Haunted Safari as "an Indiana Jones type of adventure [that] offer visitors the opportunity to go on a journey to help save the 'lost species.'"

The Boo at the Zoo's animal enrichment activities are the only parts of the attraction that involve live animals (besides the ubiquitous peacocks). "Keepers love to use pumpkins with lots of different animals, so they are active in their search for food," Frimer tells Paw Nation. There are four animal exhibits at the Bronx Zoo that use pumpkins (birds, reptiles, giraffes, monkeys). If you can get there in time, it's a fun and fascinating spectacle.

Of course, you need not take your children to the zoo just for its take on Halloween; the Bronx Zoo is one of the best in the nation, and has many other year-round attractions. The gorilla enclosure alone is worth the price of a membership.

Tags: boo at the zoo, BooAtTheZoo, bronx, Bronx Zoo, BronxZoo, halloween, spooktacular, wildlife conservation society, WildlifeConservationSociety, zoo