The Isle Of Pink is back…. for the month of September

The Isle Of Pink is back !  The Island is turning pink again throughout September with a range of activities and stunts taking place.  It’s all to raise funds for life-saving research into breast cancer whilst spreading an important awareness message at the same time.  The Park are contributing by having the team on site on Monday September 1st for a fund raiser day accompanied with a Dippy Story !  Please support this worthy cause ………

The super duper Pink race
Today it was Pink race day, a day everyone had been looking forward to for a very long time. For the last 7 days every animal in the Park had been given special pellets to pop into their drinks and take at meal times 3 times a day. These contained a special ingredient which all the flamingos eat to maintain their bright pink coloured feathers. If taken following the Keepers strict instructions it would guarantee complete colour change by day 7. Today it was day 7 and to our absolute delight we discovered it had worked!! Every single animal had turned to bright pink!


The first ever Pink race to take place at the Park was being organized and judged by Amber the owl, a very wise old Eurasian eagle owl. Each animal taking part had been given a sponsor form several weeks ago and all of them had been very busy collecting as many sponsors as they could. After the race all the money would be gathered together and given to a very special charity that did research towards medicines to help cure Breast Cancer. Today the whole Park had been decorated with pink bunting flags, pink balloons tied on to the outside entrance of every animal’s house and the flamingo’s playground floor had been fitted with a very soft fluffy pink carpet.
Brian, a large and very friendly white goose who lives at the Park’s upper pool had been training the flamingos for weeks ready for the Pink race. He had given each bird an individual exercise programme and set fitness targets to complete each week. The flamingos had been separated into 3 teams by the 3 different flocks that live at the Park, the Chilean’s, Lessers and the Caribbeans.


Kookie, known by everyone at the Park as the “ laughing Kookaburra”, a very crazy bird who tends to laugh all the time at anything and with everyone, today was on the gate to welcome all the pink guests, and collect together the many sponsorship forms. The flamingo’s playground soon turned into a pink blur of colour as the animals filled the rows of seats. High up on the stage overlooking the race tracks stood the beautiful Sammy, a blue fronted Amazon parrot. She had the most wonderful voice and sang for all the animals as they waited for the contestants to get ready and the race to begin.


The pink Park animals gathered around the refreshment tents where the parrots were serving all kinds of delicious pink foods, prawn cocktail and crab sticks, pink iced cupcakes sprinkled with 100’s and 1000’s, huge whipped up balls of candyfloss on sticks and tubs and tubs of strawberry ice cream!! The pink drinks being served ranged from freshly squeezed pink grapefruit juice, strawberry milkshake with floating marshmallows and bendy straws to super fizzy pink cocktails which contained quite a lot of alcohol and were not allowed to be consumed by the contestants taking part in the race.


The flamingos began to take their places at the start line, some stretching and warming up their muscles whilst others stood posturing on 1 leg and having a natter. The Chilean lady flamingos were sitting alongside the race tracks on top of their birds nests as their eggs were due to hatch at the end of August. They had been given the extremely important job of spotting any cheating or rule breaking during the race.


Amber the owl stepped onto the stage at 3 o’clock and spoke to all the pink Park animals through a very loud claw held speaker, he congratulated all of us on such a super pink race event and wished all the flamingos and race partners the best of luck! He then handed a pink blindfold ribbon to each flamingo which the little race partner then tied around their head to completely cover their eyes. Amber then explained the rules of the pink race, once blindfolded the flamingos were then to bend down so their small race partner could climb carefully onto their back from where they would shout directions to their flamingo as to the whereabouts of the finish line. The winning flamingo being the first to cross the pink finish line ribbon with their little pink animal race partner sitting on their back. The first aid squirrel medical team were standing by close to the track in case of any injuries.

Dippy being the largest of the flamingo race partners rode on the back of the largest flamingo of the flock, his name was Francis. Other animals such as the white mice, chickens, rabbits, cockatoos and rats all took their places on the start line ready to race! Amber blew the whistle and off we went, it was a very funny race, lots of the flamingos bumped into each other, wobbled all over the place and some wandered quite far off the race track even though they were being given very good directions. Others were quite speedy but lost their race partners off their backs and had to pick them up again all whilst being blindfolded!


The winner of the pink flamingo race crossed the ribbon with a huge smile across his pink face and his partner was waving his little paws high up into the air, it was Roger the rabbit and his flamingo who had won!! Pink trophies were handed out on the stage to the winners and runners up, everyone clapped and cheered and then all joined in the pink after race party which went on late into the night!