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Monroe’s Wild Side
By : Jorge L. Oliver
In Monroe’s Louisiana Purchase Gardens and Zoo, size does matter: the smaller, the better. That’s why the zoo inaugurated its latest attraction—the Hall of Small—this past Halloween. The exhibit features dozens of bugs, spiders and creepy crawlers in a remodeled building that became too small for the primates it used to house.
A visit to the Hall of Small’s Animatronic Insect Exhibit will make you feel as though you’re in a scene of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. The walls are painted with giant blades of grass the size of trees and huge stones dot a display designed to look and feel as if you are eye-level with ants and other insects, while large robotic bugs move and behave like the real thing.
“This exhibit is unique to the area,” says Joe Clawson, director of the Louisiana Purchase Gardens and Zoo, adding that the park’s reasonable admission prices of $4.50 for adults and $3 for children have turned the zoo into an important regional draw.
Not everything is small in Monroe’s largest attraction. Despite being located in the eighth largest city in the state, the Louisiana Purchase Gardens and Zoo ranks third among the Pelican State’s zoos, behind New Orleans’ Audubon Zoo and the Baton Rouge Zoo. It features more than 500 animals, most of them considerably larger than your average insect, including lions, tigers, kangaroos, giraffes, monkeys and the only hippopotamus in Louisiana. Visitors can tour the zoo on a boat ride or wagon rides pulled by Percherons.
The attraction also features botanical gardens that display dozens of plant species, some native to Louisiana and others brought from faraway lands. The gardens beautify the park and add an educational edge to the zoo visit. “Normally, people would rather see giraffes than geraniums, but we are revamping the Gardens section of our park in order to display many wonderful plants educationally,” says Clawson.
The zoo, Clawson explains, has been a fixture of Monroe since the early 1900s. It was renamed in the 1970s to commemorate the Louisiana Purchase.
monroezoo.org
How To Get There: American Eagle provides service to Monroe, La.
Book your trip today! Visit www.aa.com, call American/American Eagle reservations at 1-800-433-7300, or call your travel agent for more information.
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