When Memorial Day weekend also meant baby animals came out to play at the Milwaukee zoo

Editor's note: Once upon a time, Memorial Day was a coming-out party for baby animals at the Milwaukee County Zoo, especially in the Children's Zoo. Back then, the Children's Zoo was only open during the summer months, starting with Memorial Day weekend. In more recent years, the area's been known as the Northwestern Mutual Family Farm; although it's not fully operational until Memorial Day weekend, it is now open year-round. In this column, first published May 22, 1980, The Milwaukee Journal Green Sheet's "Zooperstars!" columnist Alicia Armstrong offered an ode to the Children's Zoo return.

All the best is yet to come. 

We've reached that time of year when we are full of anticipation, like the child who waits for ketchup to pour onto his hamburger. But instead, we're waiting for sunshine to pour onto us. 

Sunshine, warm days, balmy nights. We've already had a seasonal taste of these goodies, and now we can expect them to be everyday fare, for Memorial Day and summer are just ahead.

And the Children's Zoo will open for the season on Saturday (May 24, 1980). 

Just in case you've spent the last decade tied in a closet and have no knowledge of the most exciting community developments here, we'll begin by informing you that the Children's Zoo, which opened for the first time in 1971, is part of the big Milwaukee County Zoo. The main zoo is open every day of the year, but the Children's Zoo is strictly a summer place. It's open from the Saturday before Memorial Day through Labor Day. 

The Children's Zoo is the place where little children pet baby animals, and adults have great times watching children watching the animals. 

In past years, Children's Zoo stars have included lion cubs, long-legged baby camels, and long-trunked baby elephants. However, no such worthies will be here this season, because the little zoo is going to have a theme for the first time. It is going to be a piece primarily for North American wild and domestic animals. 

So it will be goodbye, lions; hello, wolves. 

Children's Zoo Supervisor Randy Deer (he's also a North American, with a most appropriate name) says that the Children's Zoo cast this year will include fawns, wolf cubs, a baby female red fox, some young coyotes, baby raccoons, sheep that will eat out of your hand, fancy chickens and pigeons, fancy mice, a dairy cow, puppies, kittens, rabbits, miniature horses, prairie dogs, owls, pigs and many others. 

Even the Children's Zoo snakes will be North Americans, Deer noted. Instead of boa constrictors, which youngsters have hugged — or, at least, petted — in the past, there will be California king snakes and Wisconsin's own fox snakes. 

However, there will be some animals and at least one bird from faraway places. The bird is Hoppy, the South American king vulture who will occupy his usual place in the Children's Zoo Aviary. 

Other foreigners expected to be on hand will be enormous Aldabra tortoises. These giants, which weigh hundreds of pounds and are a few feet long, are so named because they are native to Aldabra Island some 250 miles north of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. 

And Deer expects to have a python, an Asian snake, in one of the little circus wagons outside the Children's Zoo office. 

About this feature

Each Thursday, the Green Sheet brings back some of the stories and features that gave the old Green Sheet its distinct identity, including Alicia Armstrong's "Zooperstars!" column about the doings at the Milwaukee County Zoo. Look for them in print and online at jsonline.com/greensheet.

Green Sheet memories 

As we mark the second anniversary of the return of the Green Sheet to the pages of the Journal Sentinel — it first arrived in this space on May 25, 2015 — we could use your help with our weekly Throwback Thursday feature. Which features from the first Green Sheet do you want to rediscover or learn more about? Let us know at cforan@journalsentinel.com or by writing to: Chris Foran, Green Sheet Ideas, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 333 W. State St., Milwaukee, WI 53203.