Trek on down to Cleveland Metroparks Zoo for Wolf Awareness Day from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, October 16.
Enthusiastic pups and pack leaders can visit the Zoo's Wolf Lodge to make wolf crafts, play interactive wolf games, and learn the facts about this often misunderstood animal.
Visit the Wolf Conservation Station, where you can hear the latest news on wolf populations in the wild, learn what you can do to help these protected species and even adopt one of the wolves at the Zoo through the Cleveland Zoological Society.
Get a glimpse of the Zoo's six Mexican gray wolves, which arrived from the Wild Canid Survival and Research Center near St. Louis in January 2009. Also known as "lobos," Mexican gray wolves are the smallest, rarest and most genetically distinct of all gray wolf species in North America.
All six wolves at the Zoo, Catori, Sarita, Una, Aprecia, Nancita and Mitzi, are sisters.
Current estimates put the number of Mexican gray wolves in the wild at 42. After being hunted to near extinction in the 1970s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began a reintroduction project in 1998 in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico. In the wild, wolves eat primarily elk, deer, rabbit and other small mammals.
Northeast Ohio's most visited year-round attraction, Cleveland Metroparks Zoo is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $10 per person, $7 for kids ages 2 to 11 and free for children younger than 2 and Zoo members. Parking is free. Located at 3900 Wildlife Way, the Zoo is easily accessible from Interstates 71, 77, 90 and 480.
To learn more, visit clemetzoo.com or call (216) 661-6500.
