We love the Zoo and you should, too! It’s time to turn on the lights of spring at The Maryland Zoo for Spring Illuminations in Druid Hill Park. Let Mike Evitts tell you everything about the gem of a place right in the middle of Baltimore and ways to visit and be involved in celebrating these beautiful animals.
Nestor Aparicio and Mike Evitts discuss the Maryland Zoo’s upcoming Spring Illumination event, which begins with a member preview on April 3 and opens to the public on April 4, running through the end of June. The event features sculptural metal and silk works of art throughout the zoo, with special attractions like a light-up dance floor and swings. The zoo is also revamping its old exhibits, including a new red panda habitat. Proceeds from events like Brew at the Zoo support animal conservation and habitat restoration. The zoo’s strategic master plan includes new habitats, concessions, and a state-of-the-art parking lot with advanced water storage systems.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Maryland Zoo, Spring Illumination, Light City, animal conservation, red panda habitat, animal encounters, Brew at the Zoo, animal care, animal habitats, animal well-being, animal experiences, animal education, animal exhibits, animal breeding, animal conservation efforts.
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Mike Evitts
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T AM, 1570 towns, Baltimore. We are Baltimore, positive. Nothing more positive than doing what we’re doing, right? It’s a great segment. We’re at fadelies. We’re Lexington market. The big sign is up. We’re pregame Oriole right as we tape this, which is a great opportunity tell everybody it’s a great place to come and and do the pre gaming for the Orioles they are open. They’re going to be holding later hours for Orioles season. It’s all brought to you by friends at the Maryland lottery. You have the magic eight ball scratch offs to give away. They have been lucky. Mike Evans from the Maryland Zoo is about to get number 27 there. I think that’s a lucky number. Number 27 I’ve done a lot here today about Baltimore and about city and opening day. We have Mark Viviano at length. We’ve had Luke Jones stop by on his way to the ballpark, Ron Cassie, all the credentialed media here today, other than this guy, he is. I invited Kirby. I invited Shannon. They have been here and I and they said, Do you mind if Mike comes? And I’m like, Well, I’ve never met Mike, so this would be more fun, because I’m gonna learn more things. I was out at the Maryland Zoo three weeks ago today. It was, yeah, three weeks ago today, or two weeks ago today. My dear friend Bill Cole from cole roofing is a board member at the zoo and a an advocate of all of the animals and all that people love about animals. I watch him become a little boy every year we go out and do this. Last year we did the hippopotamuses or rhinoceroses. Rhinos. Yep, right. I always mix those two. Hippos are the Cincinnati and
Mike Evitts 01:28
Henrietta, like water rhinos or land mammals.
Nestor Aparicio 01:32
Rhinos are like, like, dinosaur looking like, you know, when you get up on them, you feel like you’re in a different place. This year leopard. We did the leopard this year. And my wife somehow thought we were doing something else, because we sort of let her down a different pathway chimpanzees. We thought we were doing the chimps, but we did the leopard, and it was a beautiful there was like a 65 degree day that it was like a great day to be at the zoo, and we just learned so much about each one of these animals. You could sit for hours, if not days, and study, learn your place is great. And more than that, you do boozing events, which I’m all about, brew at the zoo. My wife is too sometimes she needs a ride home. And you’re doing this light thing that’s kind of new, right? Just a brand new thing. And my wife hit me yesterday. You’re here because of my wife. My wife say you ought to get the people from the zoo on and talk about the light thing. I want to learn about that. And I’m like, All right, so here we
Mike Evitts 02:29
are. Well, it’s, you know, it’s a tough thing to talk about on radio, because it’s, it’s so immensely visible. It’s, you know, we’re literally, we are. You’re going to see the zoo in a whole new light. We’re installing these sculptural, metal and silk covered works of art there, I think, in
Nestor Aparicio 02:45
light city. And what light city was in Baltimore years ago, which was I lived at the harbor then, I thought was a greatest idea ever. I just thought it was just, it was an art thing that so cool with the water in the harbor. And I’m thinking at the zoo in the middle of the woods, it’s, you’re you’re gonna, I know how creative people can be with light and and how light does something to your soul in a way that that’s the reason people go to Vegas. It’s the people reason people like cities, you know, the light part of it. They call Paris the city of lights. So you’re doing this thing. And I think the interesting part is, for any old schooler like me, you have a whole zoo out there that got outdated, right? Like you had exhibits that just no longer were considered humane, no longer safe, out of date. You had a whole part of your zoo that had literally had their just cages, is what I would say, right? Yeah, that’s what they
Mike Evitts 03:36
were, yeah, and they were, they were small, and they didn’t any longer. They didn’t meet the standards of animal Well, being that a modern zoo, an accredited zoo, goes for so for a very long time, the that section the zoo have been closed. It’s called main Valley. And if you grew up going to the zoo as a field trip, or, yeah, that was the zoo. That’s the old part of it there. And you know. So here we are. We’re about to turn 150 years old next year. And Kirby Fowler a couple years ago, and the trustees, like like Bill Cole, started thinking about how we can reinvent that part of the zoo, and how can we create a better experience. So the first thing they did was they opened it and they talked about the history of animal care and how that’s evolved educational why those old structures, they looked they looked like torture chambers, they looked creepy and kind of Gothic and but that, you know, that was the best we knew how to do at the time. Well, now we know better. So those actually the oldest part of our zoo is going to be the birthplace for the rebirth of the whole zoom. It was the front of the zoo at one point, right the front, and it is again, but people have been walking through so we were teaching, treating it like a history lesson for a while, but that’s that was buying time for what’s about to happen next. So we released a strategic master plan a couple years ago Kirby and the board, and that calls for new habitats in that area. It calls for new concessions and new guest amenities. It called for a brand new parking lot, which is which opened last fall, and is
Nestor Aparicio 04:57
amazing, and I always remember parking on the cobblestone. Going out there. That’s part of the charm. Well, not
Mike Evitts 05:01
if you, you know you had a stroller, or you’re in heels, or you had mobility issues. That wasn’t, it was. And when, when we built that, it was to let rainwater through. But over, over years of cars driving on it, the soil got so packed it wasn’t even doing that. So our new parking lot actually has underneath it looks like this. I haven’t been
Nestor Aparicio 05:18
to your new parking lot. I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t. I’ve been up the Mansion House every time I go,
Mike Evitts 05:21
right? Well, the new lot has it, has it. Literally, it looks like the Sistine Chapel, but it’s buried underground, and that’s just for water storage. So every drop of rain water that hits the lot gets filtered through sediment and then and hangs out down in that that that cistern underneath. And it’s a state of the art system that when the flooding event has has ceased, we can slowly re release the water back into ultimately end up at the Jones Falls river, but it’ll be cleaner than when it hit the ground as rain water. I love
Nestor Aparicio 05:45
clean water. I mean, I had Doug workman on for Liberty pure, one of my clients this week, talking about rain water, well water, safety of water. So the fact that you’re just thinking about water, the thing that blows my mind when I’m at the zoo, and this is probably blows Bill Cole’s mind, because when we talk about I talked to them for an hour this morning, how many people are involved? And every animal, whether it’s a leopard, whether it’s whatever it is, has this incredible ecosystem and that every one of these animals has not just one person that loves them and cares for them. There are teams of people around the clock, keeping these beautiful creatures alive, happy, moving about and living long lives. And then the background of that is the science of mating rare animals, the pathology of all of these animals and all of these zoos around the world to try to make it more humane, make it better for kids, make it more educational, and make it better for the animals, right, that are in captivity,
Mike Evitts 06:48
right? Well, you know, events like brew at the zoo, or like spring Illuminations, which we’ll get to those are really, those are fundraisers for animal conservation. So for every signature animal species we have at the zoo, we have a concurrent habitat restoration process in country where these have, these animals are from in the wild. So we’re working with local partners in Namibia, in South Africa, on a dormant volcano in Panama, we’re doing Bolivian River dolphin rescue. We’re, you know, we’re, we’re working with native species here in Maryland with the Department of Natural Resources. So for everything that’s happening at the zoo, there’s a lot of stuff that’s going on outside the zoo to make this world a better place for the animals. Our African penguins, for example, that’s one of our most high visibility.
Nestor Aparicio 07:31
You don’t have a tap. You want to be talking about the penguins. What? So you know my penguin story? No, all right, so my wife was diagnosed with leukemia 11 years ago, last week at Hopkins. So 2014 March, 20 of 2014 so my wife needed a bone marrow transplant to have her life saved. So needless to say, this was heroin. She’s 100 you know, 155 nights in the hospital at Hopkins, bald, neutropenic, all that awful stuff that happened. The man who saved her life saved her life twice. He saved it once. In June of 14, saved her life again in November of 15. We did not know him, but there were letters exchanged through the registry that saved his life. They’re now twins, right? So they bleed the same blood. So this young man, when we literally the night we met him online was two years to the day after her first transplant. So we met him online in late 16 right the minute we met him online, we were texting or IMing, basically on Facebook back and forth. We met this guy saved my wife’s life. And we’re like, what, what things in life do you want to do? And bucket list and all that. He wrote this bucket list down, and it was in his handwriting in German. So Australia’s not Australia was Austra, and he was always things. And he said he wanted to see the penguins in Africa that was on his bucket list. Wow. So short story long. We went over to Germany, met him, met his family, had cocktails and do all the things we do over there. And then we flew him over here to surprise him for his birthday. And between that two month period of time, I kept saying to Jen, he likes penguins. He likes penguins. She’s like, well, we’re gonna, you know, with this, take him to San Francisco. That was on the list. Let’s take him to meet Dirk Nowitzki. That was on the list because he’s tall and German, right? And I’m like, but the penguins, but the penguins. And my wife loves animals. My wife is the biggest fan of the Maryland Zoo. There is period she takes her sister to brew at the zoo. I have a whole rhinoceros story I gotta tell you about. So in 2016 November 16, he came here for his birthday, and we did, and I found this. So I was blown away. I put penguin zoo Baltimore, and you popped up and I was ignorant. Kirby wasn’t working at the zoo then, so it’s not Don’s fault, though. He told me we did the penguin experience for him, surprised him and. And blew his mind. First off, he was here meeting the woman he saved his life. He’s met this and that, football games, crab cakes, my mom was alive, all that stuff. He had no idea that day that we were taken to the zoo. No idea that he was going to hang with the penguins that he wanted to go to West Africa to be a part of. And they’re little guys, cute little penguins. And I don’t know that was almost 10 years ago, and now my wife is addicted to you when she flies her sister in for brew at the zoo, I have to drive him around because they get all cranked up over there on all those little glasses. We only had the little glasses. Yeah, you sure they are unlimited. So yeah. And last year, Cole invited me to the accelerant event because we’re bunkies. And he said, come on out early. We’re doing a thing. And I’m like, it’s a networking thing. I’ll put something nice on. I’ll shave up nice. Shannon will be there. I’ll try to look nice and like all that. And we went out there, and they took us down to the rhinoceros house. I called it hippopotamuses, because I’m being ignorant. Took us down to the run, and there’s a dozen of us, and there’s a little bench, and there’s these giant prehistoric look at Dinosaur rhinoceroses, and I look up, and the first thing I said to bill is, my wife’s really gonna be pissed, like, how did you not tell me we were doing this? I can’t even put a picture of this up, because if my wife sees it, she’s gonna be mad. And I sat on it all night. I did my networking event. I went home that night, and my wife knew was I was at the zoo, and she was working. She had to work that night. I went home and she’s like, what you do? I’m like, nothing. I had a good time. Yeah, see, almost, yeah. I saw Amazon’s all good, and I finally felt really guilty. And I’m like, All right, I’m gonna let you look at the pictures, you know? I’m like, she’s like, Oh, you did the rhinoceroses. I did that with my sister last year. We did the whole experience. And I’m like,
Mike Evitts 11:54
so she was holding out on you.
Nestor Aparicio 11:57
I’m like, is that the thing I picked you up drunk and brewing? Yeah, we did it first thing in the morning. Yeah, that’s why we went early. And I’m like, All right, I don’t feel guilty anymore, but I took her to see the leopard this year. Boy leopard, something she’s cool leopard is, I mean, the story about that leopard and her habitat and her way of life, when
Mike Evitts 12:17
she participates in her own medical care, she’ll come up, right?
Nestor Aparicio 12:21
Yeah, they were showing us all of this, yeah, that she is a social leopard in some way, yeah? And that makes her special, yeah? Well, the Maryland Zoo special, Mike Evans is here. I’m such my stupid stories about your animals, but like it affects my family and my wife loves your animals, and my wife made me bring you on to talk about this incredible light festival, which we’re gonna have to tell what is it happening and how long does it go on? Because I know it’s soon
Mike Evitts 12:47
the spring illumination is actually, I don’t know when this is gonna air, but it kicks off with an a member preview on Thursday the third to tomorrow night, okay? And then Friday the fourth of April, it opens to the public. And it’s gonna be running after the zoo’s closed, because it’s, you know, it’s a night. It’s a night. It’s a nighttime thing, right? So it’s running from six to 10. How many nights? It’s running through the end of June, every night, every night. Wow. Okay, check the calendar there a couple week. Okay,
Nestor Aparicio 13:11
okay, fair enough. So I come over about six o’clock, free
Mike Evitts 13:15
parking in this brand new parking lot. Can I get a beer? You can get a beer. And, in fact, I don’t know if you know the guys from echo Ben.
Nestor Aparicio 13:23
I don’t know them, but I want to know
Mike Evitts 13:25
that well, they have hooked us up with a special cocktail just for the just for the the event.
Nestor Aparicio 13:29
I think Steve’s a genius. He’s been, you’re ducking me, Steve, he’s never been on my show, and I love him. You know, he did this huge thing with my dear friends at Costas that has made me cry a couple times this week since Mr. Cross has died, but his broccoli tempura is maybe no offense. The crab cakes, God knows, I love them, the broccoli tempura at Eco bin, it’s my like dirty pleasure. You know, some people do illicit things and they break laws and they feel dirty about it. I drive down to Hamden, and I go into the back door in the alley, and I come out with my little box. You have to eat it right away, because it’s important, that’s right, you know? And I do my little Dippy dip, and sometimes they eat the whole thing. And I don’t tell anybody. I’m even there. No one needs I sneak in, yeah? So like, if I go going to the city, I’ll just sneak in and get my broccoli, yep, and get out. Yeah. Nobody knows, and nobody sees me. But I sit in my car like I’m doing something dirty because I’m not sharing it. But I love, I love Eckerman. So there, there’s your plug for Eckhart. So
Mike Evitts 14:32
we’re, we’ve got Asian inspired dishes, but the big, the star of the attraction will be, it’ll be a little bit like light city, only more compressed, because it’s going to be throughout the first part of the zoo. So from the main gate all the way down to where the train and the concessions are, it’s going to be light everywhere. Some of them are animals. Some of them are kind of abstract. If you remember, at lit city, they had like, a light up dance floor, light up swings. We’ve got all these amazing, like, photographable, Instagrammable moments that are going to happen. And I know it’s going to be successful, because. So right now, all these things have been set up. It took several weeks to set this thing up. And even in the daytime without the lights on, people are gobsmacked. They keep they stop our volunteers. They ask, what’s going on? What is this that’s about to happen? And if one of the other things, reasons I know it’s going to be a success, is people who have seen this in other cities, like in Washington or Philly, they talk about how amazing it is, and they’re like, I’m coming to Baltimore to check this out. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 15:22
and it’s also in the middle of your park. It’s dark at night, right? So really creates a different they did a thing in Timonium, my friend did a thing up there during the holiday lights and lights, I mean, just drone shows and what fireworks represents, just light is something that after dark we’re attracted to. So I can see me having a beverage. Of zoos open,
Mike Evitts 15:43
yeah, well, with not parts of it, most of the animals are in bed for the night, and okay, that’s for their well being. So there won’t be we’ll have Ambassador animals, but the main part of the zoo will be closed. So this is just about the lights and then the other experiences. So there’ll be music, there’ll be the attraction, the other attractions we have, and, well, you
Nestor Aparicio 16:01
can’t explain it all to me. People got to come and experience, I mean, what it is, right? I don’t know what it is, but my wife already wants to do it, which means I’m going to be doing so
Mike Evitts 16:09
Maryland zoo.org, we’re gonna have a big reveal tomorrow. So right now, you’ll see the illustrations for it, and then tomorrow you’re going to start to see what it actually looks like. Because we haven’t even, I haven’t even seen it all lit up yet myself, because they’ve been tested. You haven’t even done like a dry run. Now we’re doing that tomorrow with with Bill Cole and the trustees and some influencers, all right? And then public Friday night, I have no influence.
Nestor Aparicio 16:29
What night, Thursday, okay? So, so opens on Friday, open for for two months, basically, right? Every after two months, all right? And then this is
Mike Evitts 16:36
just the beginning. So the parking lot was actually the beginning, and then this is happening. And then in about a month, in the same area, this old part of the zoo that had been closed for a while, we’re gonna break break ground on our new red panda habitat. So this is gonna be the first combination of new animal species and new habitat constructed at the zoo in 10 years. And in that part of the zoo, it we haven’t had one in a while, because red pandas, red pandas. If you’re ever having a bad day, just Google red panda, and you’re gonna go down a wormhole. They, when they get scared, they kind of rear up. And I think they’re trying to look big and scary. They look like raccoons, yeah, yeah, they get that. It’s a thing going on, yeah, it’s, it’ll, it’s their viral. They’re pretty amazing. They got a big personality. Little guys, big personality, all
Nestor Aparicio 17:16
right, so that’s Nate. I went on to the Maryland Zoo website earlier because I was trying to get the right name of your light thing.org. What’s your light thing? Called Spring illumination, spring illuminations. I just make sure I get that right spring illumination so I roll off my tongue a little bit. So I went up there and like you can click on animals, species, mammals, reptiles, finding out all the animals you have to do. What’s your favorite animal to do? What’s the animal that we haven’t mentioned, that I got to talk about, because i Nothing’s cuter than the Penguins until you see the armadillo, and then you know, nothing’s cuter than the armadillo until you see the leopards. We have some point. Mr. Champions, these my wife got excited about the chimpanzees, and when I told her we were going to the zoo, she said, we’re going to see the chimpanzees. And your gal that wrote to me that day for the event that we were doing, she put my wife on the thread and said, We’re because we were supposed to do the chimpanzees, but we wound up doing a leopard. Yeah, there was something defeating or something about the time of the day, a new baby, Jetta baby, okay, that’s changed. She wanted to see the baby chimp. She knew about it, and the whole time we were in the car driving, she knew we were going to Zoo. She knew I did the rhinoceros last year. She kept saying, Are we doing the chimpanzees? And I had an email that said we were doing the chimpanzees. And I’m like, I’m not telling you. And I drove. We got there, and the whole time I’m thinking, we’re going to chimpanzees. We got picked up. We went down, and they took us to the leopard, and we got to the leopard. I’m like, Okay, we’re still doing the chimpanzees. And then we got, like, a half an hour to leopard, not elbow Colin, I’m like, chimpanzees, and we didn’t do the chimpanzees. And I never told my wife, and I told her on the way, Adam, like, I thought we were doing the chimpanzees. You know what? She said, Oh, that’s right, we’ll go back. So I got you a repeat customer out of that. I love it, because she still hasn’t been seen the champions. E so she wants to
Mike Evitts 19:10
do that the new baby. Ivy is pretty spectacular. And actually, Baltimore magazine, you just had Ron Cassie from Baltimore magazine here, Jane Marion from the magazine was out in the fall, and she did a story on how we care for aging animals. So it’s like elder care and well being for animals as they age, so they live longer in managed populations and zoos. I learned that.
Nestor Aparicio 19:28
I learned that a couple weeks ago, all all the animals live longer to Zoo, right?
Mike Evitts 19:32
So our oldest chimpanzee is a female named Joyce, and she’s over 50 years old, and like any mammal who walks upright, she’s got arthritis and joint issues because she’s she’s much older than the average age of her species, so she’s a senior. Most of them die in their 30s, maybe in the wild, right? It depends on the species and where they are. I’m not a chimp expert, right? The guy who works, she’s living longer than she ever could have lived in the That’s right. Okay, that’s right. So we actually have developed, with physical therapists a whole stretching routine that we do with her. Yeah, and we’ve trained her to do this. And we can, the keepers can point, and it’s all through metal mesh, because we’re a non contact suit with the chimps. But you can, you can point what’s called a target at where you want her to move, her her limb, and they can get her to stretch and move. And it’s the most amazing. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 20:15
they’re, they’re incredibly smart creatures, right? I mean, and I think you see that. I mean, I see that with my cat on a day by day basis. Animals are beautiful. They really are, and they make everyone happy, including me and my wife. Get out to the Maryland Zoo for spring illuminations beginning this weekend. Tell me what day I’m gonna be dropping my wife and her sister off. The Champions ease there, because they do this that they’re they’re zoo people, you know, like they’re about to fly out to Cincinnati and meet was it Henrietta the Yeah, she’s the most famous hippo zoo creature in in America, right? Yeah, you know, what is it? Henrietta? Is that her name? I don’t what’s her name? I always get her name wrong anyway, but yeah, Fiona, Fiona, thank you, Fiona, the hippo, there you go. Took me so there are, you know, solicit Shamu was at the Z world, right? But celebrities, I mean, every one of your animals is kind of cool,
Mike Evitts 21:07
well, so that’s the thing about these events. So like brew at the zoo, you can actually go. And there are different ticket packages that come with animal experiences. The whole zoo is open, so you walk. Your ticket to brew the zoo means you can go anywhere you want. You can take your drink or your seltzer with you, but you can also sign up for close up animal encounter, special encounters with things like the rhinos and the penguins and the giraffe and, you know, you can’t do that anyplace else. It’s, you know, it’s Memorial Day. You can have a cookout with your buddies anytime, but brew the zoo is Saturday and Sunday Memorial Day weekend, and it’s a one of it’s a lifetime worth of
Nestor Aparicio 21:39
memories, my wife’s birthday weekend. That’s really where that probably brings it in.
Mike Evitts 21:44
And the key thing about all this is all of the beer and all the fun and all the Chinese lanterns at Spring Illuminations, all those proceeds go directly back in animal care and the conservation of their wild spaces in the in the wild. So the penguins, the African penguins, one of our experts was down in South Africa and Namibia, where they’re native, doing the nest counts and with the with the South African government, and it looks like best guess, those animals could be extinct in the wild in 10 years. So that’s crazy. The breeding program that the Association for zoos and aquariums has, which is we’re a part of. In fact, our bird keeper runs the whole, she, she, she runs the whole, the whole breeding program for African American, African penguins in America. So it’s the genetic matching, and we’ll move our
Nestor Aparicio 22:32
penguin. I looked it up to bring Neal’s. It said that your zoo is literally epicenter in North America for West
Mike Evitts 22:39
African paint. We had the largest black footed, footed, or African penguin population in North
Nestor Aparicio 22:44
America. Freaked me out when I found that it was Neil’s favorite animal. Yeah. Like, that just was like, yeah. What are the odds of that? Yep, I think you might have still been the Baltimore Zoo at that point. Oh, yeah. How long you been the Maryland
Mike Evitts 22:55
Zoo? You go, that’s that. That’s before my time. It’s in the last 10 years. The signs on 83 it still says, Baltimore. Does it really well? You know
Nestor Aparicio 23:03
where it is. It’s drudel park if you say it right, and Druid Hill if you say it wrong. What’s that big construction dig going
Mike Evitts 23:10
on there? That’s they were covering over a part of druid Park Lake for I guess it’s a water protection thing that should keep our drinking water safe. So they’re starting to wrap that up. Now it’s been it’s starting to look really cool. You can see where the park elements are coming together. Coming together, and they’re they’re smoothing it over, and it’s starting to look like a park again, not just a construction. Way you make
Nestor Aparicio 23:28
things better is to make them better, right? Yeah, there’s has to be a construction period. And then there is the construction period for the spring Illuminations, which we hope everybody gets out to. I will be taking some selfies there. I promise you this, you know, and anything else coming online, any other events, brew at the zoo is about six, seven weeks away and and all summer long, obviously you guys are there, you know, anytime bring kids by.
Mike Evitts 23:50
Well, every day there’s, you can check and see the daily events. There keeper chats, there’s the penguin feeding. There’s a special moment you can sign up for, like a rhino or penguin encounter. We’ve also got adult prom. So this is for grown ups who want to come and the theme this year is, let me make sure I get this right. The theme this year is, let me see if I fit into the theme or not, retro disco rodeo. So shine up your shine up your spangles. Dust off your boots. It’s on the Disco
Nestor Aparicio 24:15
King. Yeah. Like, look, I got my 1970s belt buckle right, right now. Oh, yeah. Well, this is a 1978 Pacifica, but this is, this is my thing. We’re playing the Boston Red Sox. So I’m wearing my Boston belt buckle here. This is my band belt buckle. So that would fit right in with disco, right 100% and, I mean, that’s a disco Bell Bucha, if I’ve ever seen shiny
Mike Evitts 24:35
so that the extra bonus points for looking like a mirror ball. And
Nestor Aparicio 24:39
all I hear is, don’t look back. Or is that more than a feeling when I look at the Boston belt buckle, I’m not sure Mike Evans is here. He communicates for the Maryland Zoo. It is his first time here at the rodeo. So he didn’t know what he’s actually prepared. It’s unbelievable. He’s ready for this show. Kirby and Shannon could not make it because they’re over, literally setting the lights up. I mean, I picked a great time to have you on. Like, my wife’s like. You got to get the zoo on. They’re doing illumination. They’re doing this cool thing they’ve never done before. And I remember hearing about a couple weeks ago, and I can’t believe it’s here already. It’s spring. It’s spring. The Orioles are playing. The Orioles, we’re having crab cakes. It’s fun. The animals
Mike Evitts 25:12
are waking up. The bears are coming out of hibernation. The turtles are coming out of torpor there. The bears hibernated to Zoo too. Yeah, yeah. They go down in the fall, and they’re just starting to wake up. My
Nestor Aparicio 25:22
wife shares all these animal videos with me, and this morning she came over, and she was a Australian family renting some house in the rocky mountains of North Carolina. Oh, I saw that. And the bear got into the hot tub and just kind of hung out. I saw this. Kind of hung out. Yeah, no, my wife went to Asheville, North Carolina, with her family, and got a house in the woods two years ago, and they were there with like, four days, and they were drinking beer in Asheville and running around, doing all that stuff. And the last day, at seven in the morning, she sent me a video, and it’s a bear in the backyard going through, like the trash can. And I’m like, now I don’t need to be there. I bear only bears. I’m gonna see at the zoo safely once they come out of hibernation. Welcome. I’ll come and learn about them there. I did take my wife to a grizzly reserve, like a preserve in outside of Bozeman, Montana, and they had Grizzlies of all kinds. And the neatest part about this place, this is about seven years ago, we were out in Yellowstone, and I told her, only bears I want to see in Yellowstone are the ones to preserve. I don’t really want to be, you know, like, Yogi Bear. Like, yeah, you know, I don’t need any of that. I don’t need that stress in my life. But I took her, and this place had all of these beautiful bears. And the way the thing was set up, it was Modi, and it was out in the wilderness where you could literally take selfies with you and the bear, because they were close, and it looked or and you could take pictures of the bears that you could come back and say, oh, so it doesn’t, because it doesn’t look like you took the picture at the zoo, yeah, at all, you know. But it’s, we love animals, you know. So everywhere we go, obviously you can tell that, right? My wife loves animals, and she feeds the squirrels and the deer and the and the raccoons and the foxes and all that stuff. But at the zoo, she loses her mind because she sees everything that she would want to see if she were to go to Africa, and it’s all right here in the middle of Baltimore, yeah, that’s why she loved the leopard.
Mike Evitts 27:21
Wait, we’ve got some some prizes coming up this spring too. So where I said we’re breaking ground on red panda, and then we’re already at work on our next habitat, which will be get forgivens. We’ve got a couple new events coming back, and we got a lot in store for our 150th anniversary. What’s that 2026?
Nestor Aparicio 27:37
So the country turns 250 next year you turn 150 Yep. All right. Well, they’ve been doing a long time formerly the Baltimore Zoo. Hi to Don Hutchinson, hi to Kirby and everybody. And I always have great appreciation for Bill Cole’s love of all things animals in the Maryland Zoo. So get on out see the spring illuminations. Get there at night. Come on the weekends. Don’t get hammered with my wife on Memorial Day weekend for a birthday. And do a how many counters can you do? Giraffe, rhinoceros, penguins, what
Mike Evitts 28:05
else? There’s so many different ones you can sort of customize your whole day. Plus, we’ve got the schedule of bands, and we’ve got great local eco bands going to be there vending food. We’ve got Mount Royal soaps, which has a stand here at the market. They’re going to be if I can
Nestor Aparicio 28:18
get a neighborhood bird and broccoli tempura while I look at the animals at the zoo I’m in That’s right, that’s all I got to do. Mike, I appreciate you, man. Thanks for being a great first time guest. Get out to the Maryland Zoo, Maryland zoo.org, you find out all the information. One of the great assets that lift the city and make Baltimore so awesome. We talk about baseball and football and the harbor and all these awesome things and great places to eat. Don’t forget about our friends at the zoo and the aquarium and everybody else that’s down here doing good things. There’s people say nothing to do in the city. You know, you just have an experience that you got to come down here and get in old Baltimore. I
Mike Evitts 28:53
literally took a scooter here from my house. There’s so much to do downtown, yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 28:57
and, and people don’t appreciate it, and that’s why they need us to tell them about it. That’s all I have, a secret. Go. What’s your favorite? Go, give me a secret. Go
Mike Evitts 29:04
ahead. My secret is the back fin, not the jumbo lump. I
Nestor Aparicio 29:08
get you something right over there. I That’s my favorite. That reminds me
Mike Evitts 29:11
my grandma. My grandmother was old school East Baltimore. Where you from? I grew up in Virginia, but my mom’s from Baltimore, apart, East Baltimore. If you know where Peter Zan is on Ann Street, yeah, it’s Fells Point, yeah, so Fells Point, and then Highland town, all right, I always
Nestor Aparicio 29:27
say to Miss Nancy, who’s staring at me right here right now and waving her finger, she’ll be here tomorrow. My mom, we grew up poor in Dundalk, yeah, so my mom bought special meat, yeah, not even back special meat. And we would just, you know, mustard, mayonnaise, breadcrumbs, some Old Bay, yeah, yeah, little of this, a little so receipt, yeah. And then she fry them up like hockey pucks, yeah? And I like them that way. Everybody, everybody listens to me, serve me a nice Gucci. You know, jumbo lump. You could serve it broiled or but to me, crab cakes are a hockey puck perfect. Crab cakes are peasant food. There’s only one place they still do hockey pucks the way they did them, in the press box, Memorial Stadium, and that’s down at the Davis pub, down in Eastport in Annapolis. Yep, they still do them. That’s the way they do them down. They don’t do them any other way. My grandmother would
Mike Evitts 30:20
go nuts. She wanted as little like cracker binder in there as possible, but then she she fried up, and then she put mustard on a saltine and she eaten. That’s what
Nestor Aparicio 30:29
they always did. That’s when serving at the stadium back in the day. So when I did this, crab cakes, what’s your favorite? What’s the best? I’m like, they’re all great. They’re all completely different. But I grew up with the peasant, you know. And on weekends when we didn’t have crab meat, my mom would get salmon salmon in a can, and she would make salmon cakes. Yep, salmon cakes, hot fish cakes. Cottage Cotts were, you know, obviously, Baltimore is a cottie place, but my family, we had salmon cakes all of my childhood. I don’t know that I’ve ever been in a restaurant where I can order a salmon cake, yeah. And, you know, my friend John shields up at Gertrude, he does various different kinds of crab cakes, and that’s the one place where you can get different kinds of crab cakes. But there’s nothing like a fates crab cake. There’s nothing like a jumbo lump. And there’s nothing like really Baltimore and Maryland. Because nobody, even a guy from Virginia, would never order a crab cake outside of Maryland, right? That’s right, because you know
Mike Evitts 31:22
better if you see parsley in it. Run,
Nestor Aparicio 31:26
I had a bad experience. I did a I did 30 crab cakes in 30 days, summer of 2121 and I got a tip. It was from the restaurant association of Maryland. I’m not holding it against you, Marshall, but I was trying to do a crab cake in every county. And there’s 23 counties, but in a city, 23 municipalities. Kent County doesn’t even barely has a town in it, over on Eastern Shore. So finding a crab cake there was about going to a burger joint, but I got one. I got sent to a place I don’t want to pick on, rockville. It’s a good song by rem and all that. And montgomery county, I got, I got, went to a place in Potomac for a crab cake, and I ordered it. And they shipped their crab cakes. Had a sign, I said, they ship them and all that. It was more of like a deli kind of place with a lot of different meats and different salads. And it was beautiful. Play, very high end, very nice. They had wine. There was a beautiful place. I’m not going to out them because I don’t want to embarrass them. Because
Mike Evitts 32:24
they don’t. They
Nestor Aparicio 32:25
did their best. They don’t know they’re from Washington, that’s right, right? So was in Potomac. It wasn’t, it was a nice place, but they don’t know what they’re doing. So I went there, and I got the crab cakes, and I looked at it a little funny. And I was on my way to Northern Virginia to see sticks. Think it was sticks and Def Leppard, whatever it was, one of the summer concert packages. And I was having crab cakes every single day for 30 days. This was my montgomery county crab cake. And I put it in a bag because we were tailgating. We’re going after the concert. We had beer in the trunk and all that. We pulled it out, set the chair, put our music on, don’t stop believe so we’re listening. And my wife said, get those crab cakes out. And I’m like, this is a 21st crab cake we’ve had in 21 days, right? Pull it out. I look at it. Crab cake, you know, looking at it. Finally, I took a bite of it, and I looked at my wife, and she’s like, it’s wrong man. And I’m like, I don’t know. Let me give another bite of this. I took another bite of it. I’m eating it. I’m like, crunch. I crunch something like, What the hell was that’s like, celery. It was a chicken salad. Oh no recipe, oh no. With crab meat, dude, they took chicken salad and made and, God, I can’t even say this here in Lexington market, they called it crab cake. And I’m like, it wasn’t awful. It was just so weird. It’s just, it was weird, man, it was like they took the chicken salad recipe and put crab meat instead of chicken in it. Yeah, no, it was really weird. Man, yeah, I don’t even know it was montgomery county crab cake. So I told the montgomery county executive, I’m like, Mark, I’m like, no, no, we’re revoking, we’re annexing you to Virginia or the district, until you come up with better times. You know, Mike is here. We’re a very, very appreciative of everybody at the Maryland Zoo for sending things over. And you don’t eat crab over there, but a lot of the animals eat fish, and it’s really the diets over there. Any animal eat crabs. So, no, no, not
Mike Evitts 34:40
crab. But, you know, like our penguins will eat seafood, little fishes. Yeah, we have literally a restaurant grade kitchen just for animal diets. I’ve seen this. And every single animal, from the smallest Panamanian golden frog to the biggest elephant, has a customized
Nestor Aparicio 34:53
diet. And every zoo around the world like that, right? I mean, the research that’s gone into this, the love and care for these animals. Certainly at
Mike Evitts 35:00
accredited zoos, and all the diets are specifically approved by our veterinarian team. I
Nestor Aparicio 35:05
always I’m blown away by how many people it takes to make the village, yeah, exist over there. Get over and enjoy the spring illuminations at the Maryland Zoo. I got to sign off. I I start talking about animals, and I run long, and you got to get back and get your lights on and all that stuff Maryland Zoo. Go see my brew at the zoo on Memorial Day weekend. See him anytime between now and then, you can combine them, right? I mean, end of May, you’ll get both, right? That’s right. To zoo, you’ll get the lights too. That’s right. And the city’s got arts caps happening that same weekend, so there’s a ton of stuff happening right in the central part of the city. And artscapes Right in general Park. It’s no right, downtown. It’s still down. This time they were doing one of the festivals in drool Park, though, was that F rams, yep, okay, because that used to be down in the parking lot between the stadiums. And I’m like, they picked a better place to do it up into Park.
Mike Evitts 35:47
It’s a great park. Just, just come on a beautiful day, rent out one of the pavilions and be careful the deer.
Nestor Aparicio 35:54
We saw them on the way there. My wife saw the deer, and she like, are they? No, they’re just kind of running freely through the park,
Mike Evitts 35:59
right? Jones Falls River Valley is a super highway of deer, geese. We’ve seen otter, we’ve seen foxes, we’ve seen We’ve seen Coyote. We’ve caught coyote on our wildlife camp,
Nestor Aparicio 36:11
deep in the woods. I saw a coyote out in front of my house last year, and it did not look like a German Shepherd.
Mike Evitts 36:17
Yeah, we’re also great laying layovers point for migrating birds because of the water in the park, geese moving through and like all the wrong birds, all anything that migrates that comes up through the, you know, the Atlantic, there’s Baltimore’s a great place to for seasonal bird watching.
Nestor Aparicio 36:30
I saw my first blue birds yesterday on my bird feeder. That’s, I got pictures of them, so I’m, I’m ready. It’s an animal spring and an animal summer. Get out to the Maryland Zoo. All the brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery, at the magic eight ball scratch offs. It’s my last batch. We’re going to be a cost this next week. We’re going to be at Beaumont on the 17th. We’re going to be at Cooper’s north on the 23rd before the Orioles game, and then on the 30th, we’re at Coco’s pub in lauraville. My thanks to everybody from the Maryland Zoo. I got to thank Mark Viviana for coming by. I want to thank Luke Jones for stopping by Ron Cassie at Baltimore magazine on behalf of Dami and the entire divine and fatales family down here in Hahn family, signing off from fadelies Go Orioles, enjoy spring while we got it and get to the zoo. You.
