Haringey District Scouts

The first ever ZSL London Zoo Sleepover

The Zoological Society of London was founded in 1826 by Sir Stamford Raffles, and two years later the London Zoo opened to members of the Society. It wasn’t until 1848; ten years after Charles Darwin became a fellow of ZSL, that fee-paying members of the public were admitted to the zoo.

Now ZSL had the idea of joining museums and other institutions in allowing youth groups to do sleepovers.
And of course, who better to pioneer an event but the Scouts!

Over to Alysa Shirley CSL:

On a warm summer’s evening in July, 35 Cub Scouts, Scouts and their 6 leaders from the 8th Muswell Hill Scout Group piled through the “tradesman’s entrance” at London Zoo in Regent’s Park, not really knowing what to expect.

The evening started with a tour of the B.U.G.S building (Biodiversity Underpinning Global Survival – a nice catchy title) and a visit from the Polly the tarantula. We then took the Cubs and Scouts to see the Pigmy Hippos having their teeth cleaned. This was quite an amazing experience as the last thing you ever expect to see is a hippo opening its mouth for a toothbrush the size of a yard broom.  We returned to the BUGS house for a talk and a story with an amazing stick insect which had the children fully engrossed and wanting more.
The staff was fantastic and really interactive with the kids. It was about this time that the Cub Leaders and ADC Scouts decided to set out their sleeping bags and discovered that their sleeping partners for the night were escapee cockroaches – needless to say we left them to the space and took our chances on outside benches leaving 8th MH Scout Leaders in charge inside!)

As dusk fell the children were divided into small groups and had their torches covered in red film to preserve night vision. We were all taken on a 2½ – hour tour of the park seeing all the animals in their night time state. This was the most spectacular part of the visit as the animals are normally used to being on their own and were active and inquisitive as to why 35 faces were staring at them through the darkness! We saw the tigers, lions, meerkats and an abundance of bugs and other obscure creatures whose names escape me right now (far too overwhelmed to remember). We returned to the BUGS house shortly after midnight having been down by the canal looking for bats. The children were really tired at this point and settled down to sleep beside the locusts and escapee cockroaches (we still had not told them at this point through fear of upset – the cockroaches, that is).

The morning saw the kids rise at 7am to the sound of loud, lively ducks!? In a zoo and we were woken by ducks! No big cats roaring, no monkeys screeching – just ducks! Breakfast was served by the zoo staff and we were quickly packed up and shipped off for another hour- long tour of the animals that we had not seen last night. First stop was the rainforest to see all the Tamarin monkeys and rainforest creatures waking up – and they sure were lively. Then we headed for Africa and spent the rest of the morning with the Giraffes. What a way to finish an exhausting and extraordinary visit! We left the zoo at 0915 having been there for 14 hours.
The children were tired but overjoyed with their experience and so were the Leaders. It was at this point we told them about the cockroaches. A few frowns were thrown in our direction – mainly from our two Scout Leaders, who had wondered why we chose the benches over the warm carpeted shelter . . . . .

Now there’s an idea for recruitment; when you are short of leaders, take a tour around the benches in Regents Park.

Needless to say the whole night was voted a success and ZSL London Zoo is now open to taking bookings for sleepovers from September – check their web site at: http://www.zsl.org/info/support-us/experiences/bed-bugs-sleepovers,1336,AR.html. I would strongly recommend this experience to any Cub/Scout/Beaver group as it is worth the £50 price tag that they are setting on it.