A/N: I used to play Zoo Tycoon a little, but I never succeeded in creating a full, open, comfortable zoo. This is my take on what I would have made my zoo out to be if I had succeeded. This is loosely based off of Zoo Tycoon 2 and its expansion packs.
Disclaimer: I do not own Zoo Tycoon. Blue Fang Games developed it, and Microsoft Game Studios published it.
The Gitzlaff Zoo Project
Joseph Gitzlaff was opening his new zoo to the public, and boy, were the crowds lined up to enjoy the sights and the animals, and even enjoy a few shows, if the zoo had any, as well as a bite to eat or a sip to drink.
The main entrance/exit was linked to a gift shop called the Animal Hop Shop, where all kinds of souvenirs, books, DVD's, plush animals, and other memorabilia were being sold for good prices. Its products were about all the animals in the zoo in general. A lot of the people were looking forward to spending some money at the gift shops and stands there. But first, they wanted to see the animal exhibits, and they intended to get as much enjoyment out of it as they could.
At the beginning, the excited guests saw a forest exhibit that had a boreal forest and a temperate forest more or less side-by-side. In the temperate forest exhibit, which was called the Panda Forest, there were the Giant Panda and the Red Panda, and then there were more with the Koala, the Spanish Lynx, and the Spectacled Bear. Next door, in the boreal forest, the Bear Forest, were a few other kinds of bears, including the famous Grizzly Bear, and there was also a rare Wolverine.
Children watched with excitement as the Koala and Red Panda climbed through the trees and gazed back at them with curiosity, while the Giant Panda sat on the ground and ate bamboo plants. One girl said to her mother, "I sure wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of that big cat, mom." People began to take pictures of the bears, which the bears seemed to find mildly annoying, but didn't get outwardly upset about.
Many people started to move on to the next exhibit, which was the Blue River, a wetlands exhibit. A wide river and an invisible pit cut off the guests from the big island where animals such as the Nile Crocodile and the Hippopotamus swam or relaxed side-by-side, at peace with each other. There were about five Hippos and ten Crocs in that part of the Blue River. People looked on with interest as the Crocs made no move to harm the Hippos, and vice versa.
A ten-year-old boy asked his father, "Dad, how come the Crocodiles and the Hippos don't try to attack each other?"
"They don't dare to," said his father, "As dangerous as Crocodiles are, they're no match for the mighty strong jaws of a big, full-grown Hippo, and as long as the Crocodiles leave the Hippos alone, the Hippos will leave the Crocs alone."
"Wow, that's interesting," replied the boy.
In another part of the Blue River, isolated from the Crocs and Hippos, there was an area with a large beaver dam in one part of the river, and an American Beaver at work there. Nearby, there was a small flock of Greater Flamingos wading in the water, possibly looking for fish, which was exactly what Joseph had done to the Blue River's river. In another section, sitting alone on a rock, was a critically endangered Florida Panther. Actually, there was a small family of them on that rock, a male, a female, and two cubs. Various persons commented on how it was that this particular kind of panther had become so endangered in the first place.
At this point, some of the guests stopped to get a drink of water from the drinking fountains, or they stopped by a drinks stand and got some beer, soda, or lemonade. A second gift shop was near the Blue River in the southwest of the zoo, the Safari Zone gift shop. It, too, had many things to buy, but once again, most of the guests were going to wait.
Next was the savannah exhibit, or the Serengeti Park, although not all the animals there were technically Serengeti animals. In different fenced-in areas, the people spotted African Elephants, a Cheetah, a few Common, or Plains Zebras, a Black Rhinoceros, a Giraffe, several Thomson's Gazelles, a few Ostriches, an African Wild Dog, a Spotted Hyena, and of course, a Lion. Evidently, Joseph had a pretty good time getting animals for his savannah exhibit, and this held the attention of the guests for a long time. People were amazed that he was able to put African Elephants in his zoo instead of Asian Elephants, for a change. A girl asked her dad if the Ostrich was going to stick its head in the ground, to which he didn't think so. A few women were heard murmuring about the beauty of the Zebras, the Cheetah, the Lion, and the Giraffe, although one said, "I surely wouldn't want to have to face that Lion close-up." Some kids thought the African Wild Dog was a lot uglier than their own domestic dogs they kept as pets.
Then they moved on to the next area of the zoo, which had some enclosures filled with ice, snow, and strong air-conditioning, which were, of course, the tundra exhibits. Some people split off temporarily to get a bite to eat at the Roadside Restaurant in the middle of the zoo, where they could get hot dogs, hamburgers, cold drinks, and iced desserts, among other things. One enclosure in the Ice Capital (the tundra exhibits) housed a Polar Bear, which was sitting mostly relaxed with a couple of cubs. Evidently, it was a mother. Another enclosure had a Musk Ox. A third one had several different kinds of Penguins, including the Emperor Penguin and the Adelie Penguin.
Kids with cameras eagerly took pictures of the Polar Bear cubs and the waddling Penguins, enjoying every antic the birds did, and finding the cubs to be very cute. In fact, a zookeeper was feeding the Penguins at that moment, and so they all had the treat of seeing the birds eat. Men and women marveled at the size of the adult Polar Bear and its perfect white fur. The Musk Ox didn't get as much attention, though, but after they spotted another enclosure with a Caribou in it, they heard about how it was vulnerable, and close to endangered. Some folks were glad to hear that this zoo was working to conserve animals as well as show them off.
After the Ice Capital came the exhibit everyone had been waiting for the most, the tropical rainforest exhibits, also known as the Heart of Life. The Apes were an especially popular part of the Heart of Life, because the guests almost climbed over each other to get a close-up of them. They were kept in the Forest of the Apes. In one enclosure of this area was a family group of Chimpanzees. In another was a smaller family group of extremely rare Mountain Gorillas. In another were three Crested Gibbons, and in one more were a couple of Bornean Orangutans with their baby. The Chimps seemed to be socializing with each other, and one was digging in an artificial termite mound, or at least the guests thought it was artificial. The Gorillas were staring back at the guests, some with amused expressions, some with grouchy expressions. The Gibbons swung through the trees in their enclosure, hooting at each other and generally having a good time. And the female Orangutan was taking care of her baby, while the male just sat around not doing much at all.
Signs outside each enclosure revealed that each Ape had been given a personal name. People were interested to learn that the Gibbons were called Jon, Joy, and Jack, and the Orangutans were called Carl, Ellie, and Russell the baby. The Gorillas were called things like Chubby, Shiny, and Gusto, while the Chimp family had names like Peregrine, Paladin, and Pippin.
In other parts of the Heart of Life, there was an area with two Bengal Tigers, one orange, and one white, a Jaguar, a couple of Okapi, and a troop of Ring-tailed Lemurs. It even had a spot for a Baird's Tapir. People marveled again, this time at the human-like behavior of the Apes and the colors of the Bengal tigers and the Jaguar. Some kindergarteners thought the Lemurs were very cute and fuzzy. One five-year-old girl said to her mother, "I wanna take one of those Lemurs home, mommy!" Her mother kindly said that they couldn't just take an animal from the zoo. Zoos usually had adoption programs for that, and even then, they couldn't take them back to their private residence. The girl was disappointed, but didn't throw much of a fit.
Finally, there was one more biome available at this particular zoo, and it was the scrublands. Here, the guests found such beasts as the Red Kangaroo, the Gemsbok, the endangered Galapagos Giant Tortoise, and the vulnerable Komodo Dragon. As slow as they were at everything, the Tortoise amused several people with its slow movements and shyness. Almost anyone would marvel at a marsupial like the Red Kangaroo. And once again, some kids commented on how they wouldn't like to be near a Komodo Dragon if unprotected, after hearing about the deadly venom in a Komodo Dragon's saliva.
Besides all these, the zoo also had a Bird House and a Flight Cage to hold a multitude of birds, from birds of prey and kingfishers to foreign songbirds and shorebirds in the cages of the Bird House, and birds like herons, eagles, and marsh birds in the Flight Cage. There was also a Herpetarium in the zoo, which housed many reptiles and amphibians of all types, and even an Insectarium, which held dozens of different kinds of insects and arachnids, from ants to cockroaches, and from spiders to scorpions. Most of the guests took time out to enjoy these animals, too.
They also enjoyed the food and drink the zoo had to offer, and they bought merchandise from the gift shops, like educational books, apparel, plush animals, a variety of souvenirs, and even videos in tape and DVD. Besides the aforementioned Safari Zone and Animal Hop Shop, it also had the Simian House, which was by the Heart of Life, near the Forest of the Apes, the Serengeti Antiques, by the Serengeti Park, the Cold River Post, by the Blue River, and the Block of White Ice, by the Ice Capital. The Simian House sold sculptures, coffee mugs, plush apes and monkeys, and ape toys, all with primate labels on them. The Serengeti Antiques sold similar stuff, plus plastic Serengeti toys meant to simulate the Serengeti for children, and plush savannah animals. The Cold River Post had crocodiles-on-a-stick, complete with opening and closing mouths, a similar toy for hippos, and a Make-Your-Own-Elephant project for kids, as well as the usual stuff. And the Block of White Ice had big, stuffed polar bears, penguin apparel, and in the back, outdoors, an ice cream stand, which also sold cold lemonade and soda to warm guests.
People even enjoyed several special forms of transportation that had been installed at the zoo, like sky trams that gave them a bird's eye view of the outdoor exhibits below, jeep tours, which gave them paid rides through certain exhibits, like the Heart of Life and the Serengeti Park, and elevated paths, which was another way of them seeing the animals in unique ways. Some people said that these were excellent ways to see some of the endangered species, like the Orangutan, the white Bengal Tiger, and the Komodo Dragon.
As people started to go home with their new clothes, toys, books, and stuffed animals, not to mention cameras filled with photographs, they all had something to say about this grand new zoo.
"Hey, mommy! Look at how much stuff there is about Gorillas in this book!"
"Watch out, Greg. This Croc is about to nip off your ear. Hmm, hmm, hmm!"
"I'll bet my boyfriend, Doug, will like this new Elephant T-shirt."
"I could fill two small photo albums with the pictures I took today!"
"Amy, are you going to hug that stuffed lion all the way home?"