Jerry Lilly intended to be a baseball player. Instead, from the 1960s and into the ’80s, he became the Matchmaker of Owen Beach.
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 Darlene and Bob McMichael |
In New Zealand, gardeners are obsessed with dahlias grown in the trial garden at Point Defiance park.
Tacomans roared with displeasure when it looked like their lions and monkeys would be temporarily moved to Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo in 1951 because their animal house was falling down around them.
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Drew Perine/The News Tribune
Kikuyu, a 28-year-old aardvark, wanders by Jessica, 5 and Sierra Stillwell, 4, earlier this month. Staff biologist Jenn Donovan is practicing two facets of modern zookeeping - giving certain animals exercise outside their habitats and allowing people a chance to meet them. The philosophy represents an evolution from a time of concrete cages.
Sometime in the darkness of Feb. 29, 1964, a 24-year-old Tacoma man pumped three 9 mm bullets into Fuzzy, the large Point Defiance polar bear with a manner so mild he would eat from his keepers’ hands. The 6-year-old bear, shot in his cage, lived for 16 hours before his death, according to news accounts. They called the killer a “sniper” and an “assassin.”
Goodness, snakes alive!
In 1921, the War Department alarmed Tacomans by announcing a plan to sell Point Defiance Park, Vashon Island and other property considered surplus.
Point Defiance plays a bit part in the great sea monster story of 1893. According to a July 3 article published in The Daily Ledger, a group of fisherman intending to drop anchor off Point Defiance ended up heading toward Black Fish Bay to escape a strong wind that came up.
Point Defiance plays a bit part in the great sea monster story of 1893. According to a July 3 article published in The Daily Ledger, a group of fisherman intending to drop anchor off Point Defiance ended up heading toward Black Fish Bay to escape a strong wind that came up.
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