Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Staff photo: Kevin Wilson A decorative bow hangs on the cage of Sooner, the Hillcrest Park Zoo’s Bengal tiger. A tree next to Sooner’s cage is also adorned with ornaments for this week’s Christmas Nites at the Zoo. The event is expected to draw more than 1,500 people over the four nights.
link Staff photo: Kevin Wilson
A decorative bow hangs on the cage of Sooner, the Hillcrest Park Zoo’s Bengal tiger. A tree next to Sooner’s cage is also adorned with ornaments for this week’s Christmas Nites at the Zoo. The event is expected to draw more than 1,500 people over the four nights.
Staff writer[email protected]’Twas the week before Christmas For Hillcrest Park’s zooThe statues were tasseledGold, silver, pink, blueThe lighting was hungOn the fences with careWith knowledge that hundredsWould soon visit thereFor zoo staff, the eighth annual Christmas Nites at the Zoo feels far from poetic. But Assistant Zoo Director Mark Yannotti said the four-night affair is fun enough to justify the extra effort.
“I can’t say I’m miserable when I’m out here,” said Yannotti, who has been at the zoo for 28 years and logged time during Christmas Nites since its 2007 inception on the suggestion of a citizen. “You have a good attitude around Christmas time, and nobody really complains about a free event.”
The zoo will welcome visitors at its old entrance adjacent to Sycamore Street from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, with around two dozen exhibits featuring more than 100 animals decorated for the holiday, plus karaoke and holiday-themed photo opportunities.
Standard zoo fees are waived for the event.
Yannotti said an official count is never taken, but did note that staff gave away more than 1,600 cups of complimentary hot chocolate last year.
The event requires about two weeks of decoration, and a few weeks more for planning. But Yannotti said there is plenty of help, including 40 volunteers from Cannon Air Force Base who helped screw more than 2,000 lights into eight new strands for this year’s display.
“I always get a lot of help from the base,” Yannotti said. “So thanks to Cannon and to Fernando Gutierrez at the base who rounds people up.”
Additionally, Tuesday and Wednesday nights will feature free tours of some of the top lighting displays around the city, courtesy of Clovis Area Transit Service.
Legislative and Community Development Director Claire Burroughes said the idea for the city lights tour came from the former Clovis Pride group, which did a yard of the month program and added a holiday award for the winter season. Once the Christmas Nites program was established, Pride members suggested the tour as an extra feature.
Burroughes said the city will use three CATS buses, leaving from the old zoo entrance at 6 p.m., 6:30 p.m., 7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. both nights. Though the drivers may take different routes, each tour will visit the same houses with an anticipated tour time of 30 to 40 minutes.
Inside the zoo, staff has added or eliminated features based on realities on the ground. Nobody volunteered to be Santa Claus this year because of previous instances of hot chocolate spills, Yannotti said — they’re painful and difficult to remove from the suit.
He also said it became a waste of resources to have staff take photos because most visitors brought their own cameras or camera phones.
The zoo entrance changed in May to the interior of Hillcrest Park, but the Sycamore Street entrance will be used because the new entrance has neither the electrical capacity to handle lighting nor any particular places to put them.
The Christmas event also had some bearing in relocation of some animal exhibits near the new entrance.
“For most of the animals, (the lighting) is just going to be something different to look at,” Yannotti said. “The hyenas hated it; it scared them to death.”
