Beasts Are Blessed With a Benefit Dinner : A Friends of the Santa Ana Zoo event raised funds for a monkey habitat to be constructed next year.

Zoo News

Friends of the Santa Ana Zoo tossed a party last week in the courtyard outside Prego restaurant in Irvine, drawing about 100 guests at $40 each for no-host cocktails and a buffet of Italian specialties. The benefit raised $5,500 toward the construction of Monkey Island--an 18,000-square-foot, cageless habitat to be built next year.

The exhibit is to be the first of 50 major projects planned for the zoo, said Santa Ana Mayor Daniel H. Young, who sipped red wine and pressed the flesh of his constituents. Young said the zoo board has a master plan that calls for approximately $20 million in construction and renovations at the city-owned facility.

“We anticipate private funding for 90% of that,” said Young, “so we’re probably talking about a 10-year plan.”

Monkey Business

H Iko--a 5-year-old squirrel monkey on a leash. The handlers (from Pacific Animal Productions in San Diego) gave each guest a sunflower seed to feed shy Iko, who reached into strangers’ hands for the treat, then scampered back up to perch on familiar shoulders.

Animal Attractions

Also there were Cleo the constrictor, Marcy the opossum, Pedro the parrot, Iggy the iguana, Barney the barn owl and a pygmy hedgehog named Spot. “These animals are really used to all the attention,” said zoo volunteer Elta Chapman, who, with staffer Karen Cress Cribbs, brought the animals out of their cages one at a time and held them. “This is like our little movable petting zoo.”

Zoo board members Judy Fluor-Runels and Bradd Linn stroked Marcy’s shaggy fur as Fluor-Runels asked about possum diet, sleep habits and behavior. “So will she have babies or no?” Fluor-Runels asked in conclusion. (No, Chapman said.)

Checking out Barney the owl, Karen Amies joked about the thick feathers in the center of his face. “How would you like to get up in the morning and brush your nose?” she asked her husband, Grif. (Not much, he said.)

Marilyn Sion and Sharon Ballidis reached out and touched Cleo the constrictor, and Sion talked about her two grown daughters’ having done volunteer work at the zoo when they were teens. “They were always very animal-oriented,” Sion said. “It was a great experience for them. They learned how important the hands-on part of the job was--and they loved taking the animals out of their cages and communicating with them.”

Buffet

Iko settled for sunflower seeds, but the guests dug into a spread that included radicchio salad, prosciutto pizza, garlic rosemary bread, grilled shrimp with feta in a vinaigrette sauce, grilled eggplant and pasta in vodka cream sauce. For dessert: espresso-soaked ladyfingers, Mascarpone cheese, rum and cocoa.

Also Seen

Trudy Thomas, Friends of the Santa Ana Zoo board member and chairwoman of the party. Allen Doby, Santa Ana director of parks and recreation, with his wife, LaFaye. Ron Izumita of the architectural firm Pod/Sasaki, which is to build Monkey Island. Also there were Ron Rus, Wanita Thomas, Donna Ayotte, Mary and Ron Green, Yvonne and Eric Rasmussen and Kathy and Randy Smith.

Quote

I’m a friend of a Friend of the Santa Ana Zoo,” said Diane Triantis. “I bartended at one of their charity functions.”

“And I drank the booze,” said Triantis’ escort, Mike Gubbins, “So I guess I’m a friend of a friend of a Friend of the zoo.”