The fish popsicles are making me sweat. I m lugging two of thegiant frozen snacks in buckets, one in each arm. When I haul them up to the wooden feeding Suspended Platform Cradle, I m greeted bythree happy-to-see-me polar bears. Inukshuk, the big fella, pokes his head out of the water below,blinks and tilts his snout skywards to catch a whiff of morningair.
He can smell the treat he knows is coming. The fancy snack a bucket-sized block of ice packed with rawherring, zucchini, parsnips and oranges has been speciallyprepared for Inukshuk and his polar bear companions by a brigade ofsuperchefs who tend to fly under the radar: the Toronto Zoo kitchenteam. A staff of seven feed all the zoo s animals. When I heard thissurprising behind-the-scenes detail, I wanted to see for myselfwhat kind of organized chaos takes place in the kitchen.
And so ona busy weekday in June, the zoo chefs welcome me in for a tour. We feed about 6,000 animals a day, says Jaap Wensvoort, thezoo s head nutritionist, as he leads Star videographer Chris Soand me into the bowels of the kitchen. We don t count the antsor little fish or things like that. The Animal Nutrition Centre, which houses the zoo kitchen andresearch laboratories, is situated in the back of the zooadministration complex, north of where the animals live. The kitchen is a bright, tidy space with stainless steel counters,walk-in freezers and carts full of raw vegetables.
The main room smells like dog food and carrot peelings. A barelyused stove sits in one corner, its only job to boil water and eggs.Most food is served raw. Wensvoort is kind of like the Gordon Ramsay of this place. But not as cranky, he qualifies with a grin.
The 55-year-old is wearing a Toronto Zoo polo tucked into tan pants. His hair isstyled like the comic book character Tintin, short but for a tuftflipped at the front. Born in the Netherlands, Wensvoort came toToronto three years ago after a decade working at private,royalty-owned zoos in Dubai. Here at the Toronto Zoo, Wensvoort is in charge of the menus 500different meal plans that must be closely monitored to ensure everymonkey, lion and bear is getting the calories and nutrients itneeds. The goal is to use locally available food to make an eating planthat comes as close as possible to matching what animals would eatin the wild.
We cannot copy the wild, Wensvoort says emphatically. Write that in yourarticle. We try, but we cannot copy nature. The zoo s annual grocery bill is a whopping $900,000.
This morning, half a dozen staff members are chopping, mixing andpacking food. Gino is cutting gels nutrient-packed foodcakes that look like portions of p t . Blaire is preparingnectar for the birds. Lisa is making labels here at the TorontoZoo, they go through 3,000 of them a week.
Everything, Wensvoort says, gets labelled. While some chop the never-ending supply of fresh produce, otherspack meat, fish, bones and small rodents into delivery crates. Carnivores here are fed horse meat, rather than cow, because theformer is more akin to what they would eat in the wild no growthhormones or additives. The meat is purchased from certifiedslaughterhouses, a detail Wensvoort mentions several times. We are the Toronto Zoo, he says seriously.
We cannot buy fromthe backyard butcher. Each morning at 6 a.m., one staff member sets out in a large,flatbed truck to deliver crates full of the bagged and labelledfood to each zoo pavilion up to 1,500 kilograms daily.Zookeepers accept the food and feed the animals in their care. Today, I m put in charge of the polar bear snacks. It takes a few minutes for the fish popsicles or fishsicles, as the treats have been dubbed here to thaw enough to slide outof the buckets. Nine-year-old Inukshuk and twins Nikita and Aurora, 11, wade in thedeep end of the polar bear pool directly below the Suspended Platform Cradle, staring and waiting.
I chuck the popsicles in, one at a time. They each grab one andmake themselves comfortable. Aurora wades over to an out-of-sightshady spot. Nikita smashes hers open on a rock. Inukshuk leans backin shallow water and cradles the icy snack between his two giantpaws, gnawing quietly.
This is really like a how do you call that? a treat forthem, Wensvoort tells me later in the zoo kitchen. They call these snacks enrichment food, because it gives theanimals a bit of play, allowing them to forage in a way they wouldin nature. It improves their psychological well-being. Basically, what we re trying to do is make their life moreinteresting. Nearly everything in the kitchen is suitable for humans, Wensvoortinsists.
He knows because he s tried most of it. But I definitely wouldn t eat the rats, he adds. Monkey chow, on the other hand, is totally fine. Wensvoort hands mea piece and challenges me to try it. It looks like a piece of dung, but Wensvoort s dare-ya gaze getsme.
I bite off a chunk. It s crunchy and bone dry. I have an urge tosoak it in milk. It s not terrible, but I m glad I m not amonkey.
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