Tacoma’s annual Zoolights holiday display to feature baby animals in 700,000 lights
You can’t miss the greeter at this year’s Zoolights. All of its six arms are glowing in bright pink.
If the 100-foot-wide octopus doesn’t get a visitor’s attention at Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, there’s the blue hammerhead shark, the green sea turtle and white polar bear.
All of them will be shining when Zoolights opens Friday (Nov. 29) and runs nightly through Jan. 5 except for Dec. 24, Christmas Eve.
The annual holiday lights display is homegrown, and it shows. Front and center is Mount Rainier in all its glory — if the mountain was made of thousands of LED lights and only 23-feet-tall.
Down the slope sit the two Tacoma Narrows Bridges. The little red and white lights moving across the bridges might make you glad you’re not stuck in traffic.
The crowd favorite Flame Tree is back, of course. It’s festooned with so many green and purple lights it might distract pilots flying overhead.
The zoo has been a maternity ward this year with births of red wolf pups, a tamandua pup, beavers and a Malayan tapir calf. They’re all represented by their lighted avatars, created by zoo staff.
The zoo is social media savvy. A 90-foot-long tunnel of rainbow lights was made this year with a nod to the selfie crowd.
While the new Pacific Seas Aquarium with a huge gleaming crab on top will be closed during Zoolights hours, the South Pacific Aquarium will be open.
Wizard behind the lights
2019 marks the 32nd year for Zoolights, said Scott Clarke, the zoo’s operations manager. He’s been part of it for 31 years.
For the first 15 years he installed the lights. Now, he runs the annual lumination.
The 55,000 incandescent lights used that first year have increased to 700,000 in 2019 — all of them LED.
“There’s a lot of advantages going LED,” Clarke said as he gave a reporter a daytime tour. “It’s just a more reliable, more vibrant light. It certainly has less power consumption.”
Today, light ropes provide pathway lighting as well as adding color to displays. They’ve replaced the old-fashioned white bulbs.
Early on in the history of Zoolights, staff noticed the clear bulbs would disappear from those strands every day. Was it theft, staff wondered?
Yes, it turned out. But not by people.
Squirrels, which roam the zoo like furry pillagers, were removing the bulbs and burying them, zoo staff discovered. They solved the problem by keeping the lights on all night. Squirrels won’t touch a hot bulb.
There is no master switch at Zoolights. It takes a staff of 12 to turn on the display every evening, Clarke said.
To keep the event fresh, the staff moves favorite displays to different locations every year along with adding new features. Some are in motion, some drape the zoo’s landscaping. All of them must withstand the worst a Pacific Northwest winter can throw at it.
“When you have one of those major snow events, it’s a real challenge to keep everything working,” Clarke said as the zoo’s two new walruses whooped it up in the background.
Does Clarke put up lights at home?
“Well, you know … not so much,” he said. After all, he has hung millions of lights in his life. “That excuse with my wife isn’t floating near as well as it used to.”
Zoolights
Where: Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium at Point Defiance Park, 5400 North Pearl Street, Tacoma.
When: Nov. 29-Jan. 5, 5-9 p.m. Closed Christmas Eve.
Tickets: $13 at gate, $11 online and at Fred Meyer stores. See website for member, military and combo discounts/days.
Information: pdza.org/
This story was originally published November 28, 2019 at 6:00 AM.
