COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) — A crowd watched as the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo (CMZ) presented Panya with a special giraffe-friendly birthday cake for her seventh birthday Tuesday afternoon.
The excessive feeding excited many of the giraffes and provided the best kind of interview interruption.
The children’s hospital’s ambassador, 11-year-old Parker Reppart, presented the cake to Panya, or at least tried to, but the shyer giraffe held back and let her more outgoing peers go first.
“I think she appreciated it,” said Cheyenne Mountain Zoo giraffe keeper Kelsey Newman.
The crowd didn’t seem to mind, they sang “Happy Birthday” to Panya anyway and fed all the giraffes that were interested in the food, which was most of them.
“These events help bridge the gap between humans and animals and ignite passion between them, because what is there not to love!” said Newman.
Rachel Wright, public relations director for Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, said fostering that passion helps bring people to the zoo and put money back into the wildlife community.
Since the zoo launched its Quarters for Conservation initiative, donating 75 cents from every admission ticket to conservation, the zoo has raised over $5 million, according to Wright. She said fostering personal bonds between zoo visitors and zoo animals helps ensure wildlife and animals like Panya are well cared for.
“We hope these individual connections will leave people with memories that inspire them to care for these amazing animals in the wild,” Wright said.
In the end, Panya did get some of her birthday cake. Wright and Newman said she just needed a little time to come out of her shell.
