I remember feeding her bread when I was about 2
The zoo has changed so much since then, the Polar bear enclosure was still there then, just occupied by tigers.
On Marwell Daleks post: yeah its weird to think that Wendy lived in where the okapi are now, and it was actually smaller than it is now! and before that she used to live where gorilla island is now and that was even smaller than her new paddock.
Was her original enclosure smaller? I was under the impression her first enclosure was the same size as the Gorilla island is now.
I'm sure the new one was better though, no concrete
Her old enclosure, where Gorilla island is now, was a sort of triangle shape, quite hard to describe although an arial photo would solve it! Because the main lawn used to go between the elephant paddock and the old monkey house so alot of new ground was taken up with the building of gorilla island.
The first outdoor elephant enclosure was only about one third/half the size of the current Gorilla island( the third nearest the house) Before that the Elephants had no outdoor enclosure at all- just the indoor House(now the Gorilla indoors & public area) and they were walked in the grounds.
Wendy's later enclosure, now the site of the Okapis, was where the Giraffes used to be before her. There was also a Bison who lived in part of that enclosure at one stage. His name was Ferdinand and his house was a small brick hut adjacent to the elephant/giraffe house.
If anyone is going on a trip to Bristol zoo soon, go into the main office in the centre of the zoo and there is a large arial photo of the zoo on the wall and by the looks of it its from the early 90's, and all will be revealed!!
