yes, you could be right there. Its not like Paignton to have singleton animals unless they can't help it. Maybe you can find out if they are trying to pair her up again?
Can I just say it is pure stupidity that within the EU every bloody country has its own vet quarantine laws. These are used whenever we need to shift exotic species around the continent or to the UK. Huge load of paperwork, health checks, narcotisation of animals, mutiple blood samples, CITES import and export papers, IATA restrictions on animal transport before any transport can go forward. Coupled onto that how most individual country vet health authorities keep changing their rules every 2 months or so and you can imagine that an envisaged giraffe transport that needs to happen inside 2-3 months could in effect take 1-2 years.
Now if only they were cattle, sheep, pigs or anything from the agricultural industry and you do not need any of these items on your list to transport. Yet whenever some transmittable disease outbreak happens it is always in domestic stock. Too little care in isolating new animals, no quarantaine, no health checks (only when they fall sick, cause remember it is an economic activity we are talking about here), too little room between different farms and the list is sheer endless.
And - I should add - this is the European perspective on this.
Come to think of it: imagine if we want to confront all ills affecting our planet, like species extinctions, biodiversity loss, habitat encroachment, climate change, burgeoning human populations and natural resources usage and pollution, we need 10-50 billion EUROS each year. Now if only we would spent a little less on arms sales, we would already go a long way .....
And now for my question: If the giraffe are not coming in now, when are they coming?