Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 - 1955), Thursday 26 November 1936, page 5


Black Swan Dies In Sudden Heat Wave, But Polar Bears Survive.

Denizens of the zoo are bestirring them-selves again after having successfully lazed out the heat wave. The sudden burst of summer brought com-parative silence to the zoo, for most of the animals

were content to sleep the hot days through. But in its wake came a zoo fatality.

Strangely enough it was a native of Western Australia that died as a result of the sud-den vagary of Western Austra-lian weather — an old black swan closed its peaceful life. Ranee, the young elephant, was tem-porarily indisposed. However, the cool change and a change of diet have re-stored her to health and she was back at work yesterday, to the delight of the children. Thick juicy stems of the plantain, a specie of banana, larger in size, but not so sweet and starchy, met with Ranee's immediate approval to supple-ment her usual diet of tender palms, Moreton Bay fig leaves and delicious shoots from Indian bamboos. Bears Bear Up The polar bears, from the zero tem-peratures of the Arctic, stood up to the hot spell as well as any of the animals. They adopted the procedure of most of the animals — sleep, and forgot about the heat. But now they are pacing their cool caves again, and apparently without having turned a hair.

The lions have come out of their torpor, too, and once again find energy enough to make themselves heard. Even the flamingoes — or some of them — are standing on two legs again and have removed their bills from resting places beneath their wings. So the zoo has weathered the heat, with but one casualty, and is again resounding to the calls of its many strange inhabitants. Included in the evening of one-act plays to be presented by the junior and senior students of Miss Elsie McCallum at the Assembly Hall, Pier-street, on Friday, December 4, will be musical, comedy and period plays, for which the frocking, lighting and music will be most effective. The box plan is now open at Musgrove's, Lyric House, Perth.