Cosley Zoo's Holiday Wish Tree Provides Animal Enrichment

Near the entrance of Cosley Zoo’s (1356 N. Gary Ave., Wheaton, Ill.) Wild Side Gift Shop is a tree hung with care and conservation: the Holiday Wish Tree. Through the end of the Festival of Lights and Christmas Tree Sale on December 30, guests can purchase ornaments from its branches to benefit the zoo’s animal enrichment program year-round.

Enrichment items provide “the animals with an opportunity to act naturally,” said Lead Zookeeper Jenny Theuman, “with behaviors they would be expressing if they were in the wild.”

This is important, Theuman said, because many of the zoo’s animals are “here due to physical or behavioral injuries and can’t be safely released.”

From woven grass play balls for rabbits to scents for deer, bird mirrors, Cans O’ Crickets, and more, the program is about mental stimulation, physical exercise, and choice.

“The money from those ornaments goes towards complementing our already well-established enrichment program,” Theuman said. “We’re able to use that money throughout the year to continue to buy refreshed enrichment items and new scents and [to] replenish our stocks.”

Theuman and other zookeepers constantly cooperate on enrichment strategies, considering species-specific behavior and the individual animal’s history and natural abilities.

“We use different cooking spices,” she said, pressing drops of coconut and peppermint extracts into paper towels, then diluting them with water and rubbing them on tennis balls.

After wrapping the tennis balls in brown paper lunch bags and tying them to a pole, Theuman entered the habitat, home to two white-tailed deer, three turkey vultures, and a sandhill crane. Within a few minutes, the deer sniffed each bag.

Once they finished, Theuman moved the scent pole across the enclosure.

“The goal is to encourage the deer to investigate different parts of the yard,” she said, and the deer did so within another few minutes. “Deer are natural browsers. It encourages them to look up for their food, and if we hang it high enough, they can safely stand up and nibble and forage as they would if they were in the wild, browsing off high branches.”

Other items, like a paper-wrapped frame feeder for the crane and puzzle balls full of fish for the turkey vultures, also encourage activity.

“The natural foraging behavior for a crane is to stick his beak in the mud and to peck,” Theuman said. “If we give him this feeder, he’ll peck through the paper—he’ll really go to town on it—and he’ll get his fish and run to the water and wash it off there.”

Evaluating enrichment activities is scientific, involving measurable goals, observation, and consistency between zookeepers.

“We do recordkeeping on everything,” Theuman said. “Once you pick a behavior and develop an activity, you outline clearly what your goal is. We evaluate and document it every time we offer it.”

The zoo uses a zero-to-five scale during evaluation, with five indicating “not only were your goal behaviors achieved, they were achieved repeatedly and throughout a long duration of time.”

With the help of a Microsoft Excel document, Theuman can compare every activity for every animal year-to-year, seeing if it’s becoming more or less effective. One recent success was increasing the amount of time the zoo’s raccoons spend foraging for their food, close to the rate of eighty percent seen in the wild, through the use of puzzle balls.

But the program isn’t effective without everyone, Theuman said.

“Enrichment doesn’t happen if the [zoo]keepers aren’t well-trained. Enrichment doesn’t happen if maintenance isn’t willing to help you build something. You’re bringing us recycled newspaper, you’re bringing us old bottles of perfume,” she said. “We use all of those things.”

Through the Holiday Wish Tree, every guest can positively impact animal care at the zoo.

“Their support goes towards making the zoo a really great place,” said Theuman. “The [Holiday] Wish Tree is a way to help provide activities for the animals to be themselves.”

To learn more about Cosley Zoo’s animal enrichment program, visit cosleyzoo.org/animals. The Holiday Wish Tree will stay up through December 30, but donations towards the program can be made year-round at cosleyzoo.org/donate or in the Wild Side Gift Shop. Guests can also purchase enrichment items directly from the zoo’s Amazon Wish List at amzn.to/2aUD9zm.