It’s time once again for the Woodland Park Zoo’s Fall Fecal Fest, where gardeners hope to be the few lucky ones able to purchase the zoo’s prized Zoo Doo or Bedspread.
Photo by Ryan Hawk, Woodland Park Zoo.
Zoo Doo is the most exotic and highly prized compost in the Pacific Northwest, composed of exotic species feces contributed by the zoo’s non-primate herbivores. It’s perfect for vegetables and annuals. Bedspread, the zoo’s premium composted mulch, is like Zoo Doo but with higher amounts of wood chips and sawdust. It’s the perfect mulch for perennial beds and woody landscapes such as native gardens, rose beds, shrubs, tree rings or pathways.
To have a chance at the doo, send in a postcard between Sept. 1-19; just one postcard for each drawing. For Zoo Doo, mark your postcard “Zoo Doo.” For Bedspread, mark your postcard “B.S.” Entry cards will be selected randomly for as many entrants possible. The Zoo’s “Dr. Doo” will contact the lucky drawn entries only.
Send a standard postcard to:
Dr. Doo
Woodland Park Zoo
601 N. 59th St.
Seattle, WA 98103.
Include the following information:
• Name
• Day and evening phone numbers
• Preference: Zoo Doo or Bedspread
• Amount of Zoo Doo or Bedspread you’d like to purchase (anything from a garbage bag to a full-size, pick-up truck load)
• Weekday or weekend preference for pick-up
The cost for Zoo Doo and Bedspread: Pick-up truck 8×4 bed: $60; 6×4 bed: $45; 6×3 bed: $35. Limit one full truck per person. Garbage cans: $8 to $10 depending on size; bags: $4 to $6 depending on size. Two-gallon and pint-sized buckets are available anytime at the ZooStore for $14.95 and $4.95, respectively.
Pick-up dates for Zoo Doo or Bedspread are Oct. 2-16. The zoo provides the shovels and the lucky winners load their compost.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Stupid Hippie // Aug 30, 2010 at 12:56 pm
End Scat Slavery NOW!
Join the struggle!
2 Iron City Mike // Aug 30, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Only in Seattle. Possibly Portland.
3 Fnarf // Aug 31, 2010 at 12:54 pm
No, not “only in Seattle”. Zoo manure is used as compost all over the country and the world, including Fresno, Cleveland, Louisville, Los Angeles, North and South Carolina, Paignton in England, New Zealand, and a zillion other places. In fact, I’ll bet that almost every zoo composts their manure, whether they sell it to the public or not.
It’s no different than what’s taken place on farms for the past ten thousand years. Nothing to do with stupid hippies, I’m afraid.
4 Coffee:Black // Sep 1, 2010 at 6:05 am
Ah, the wonderful world of poop.
5 Claire // Sep 1, 2010 at 8:26 am
Yet another way for WPZ to make money on the 3 caged elephants (on less than one acre). But, I suppose it’s o.k. since they’ve ruined the lives of these animals anyway. The reason they won’t accept the Elephant Sanctuary’s generous offer to care for these elephants for life in a wonderful setting (2,700 acres of rolling hills and varied terrain) is: $$$. WPZ cares nothing for what’s best for the elephants, only what’s best for the gate.
6 Stupid Hippie // Sep 1, 2010 at 12:55 pm
“reason …… is: $$$”
Exactly! There’s millions of dollars in profits to be made by Big Zoo in scat.
7 Tahomajim // Sep 1, 2010 at 6:54 pm
#5 you’re full of #2. Three elephants poop only makes up for 10% of zoo-doo. I asked.
BTW what does Hohenwald do with elephant poop? You guessed it. It’s composted and sold to make money. Have you ever toured Hohnewald? If you really think Hohenwald is elephant Nervana you need to go there and see for youself.
Or are you one of those who say it must be true because I read it on the internet. Sigh ……
8 Coffee:Black // Sep 8, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Man, am I so over this conversation at this point. I agree that both sides have good points but you have to stop turning every article about the zoo into a battlefield for the elephants. I mean, come on, this is an article about using fertilizer to raise funds for the zoo. All of those funds go towards caring for the animals, maintenance, upkeep and building new facilities to better accommodate them in the future. It isn’t has if the zoo is buying yachts or corvettes with the money, it just takes a lot of fund raising to run a zoo.
The zoo is not evil, it does care about the elephants, but there is a major money issue behind keeping them there as opposed to sending them somewhere else. It cost millions of dollars a year to run and maintain the WPZ and support the conservation programs that they raise money for around the world. People are more likely to donate money for a cause about a specific animal if they can see the animal that it is going to support. Keeping the elephants there may be unfair to the individual animals but may also help raise money and awareness for the species world wide and help save them from eventually going extinct in the wild, while also helping to build bigger and better facilities for the captive population in this country.
Such a decision is not evil as much as it is morally ambiguous, such dilemmas occur in reality more so than you seem to think, Hippie and Claire. The world and this issue are not as black and white as most people would like to make them out to be. In reality most situations are shades of gray and very rarely is anything completely right or wrong.
If you had to make a choice to save the whole human population of China from a virus, but had to send 3 individuals to deliver a vaccine through a warzone you knew they probably wouldn’t survive in order to accomplish that goal would you give the order or would you spend hours arguing that it’s wrong to send people to their possible death simply because it may or may not save 1.5 billion people?
Such a situation is not good or bad, either way you are going to end up with elements of both no matter what you do. Please contemplate this, or better yet read a damned book because there are plenty of them out there that tackle this same issue of moral ambiguity.
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