Big changes are planned for a small zoo at a Davenport city park. Dan Shermann is Davenport’s parks director and says Fejervery Zoo has, in the past, taken just about any animal that was available. He says they had an expensive parrot that cost a lot of money to feed, but it was so foul-mouthed, no one could keep it in a home.
The zoo is getting a grant from Guardian Industries in DeWitt to help pay for renovations that will bring a new petting zoo to the Davenport facility. In the meantime, Shermann says the zoo is finding new homes for many of its other animals that don’t fit into the plan. He says instead of North American species, they had snakes that outgrew people’s capacity to keep them and all sorts of other cast-off creatures.
Now, they’ve developed a new collection policy at the zoo to improve the quality of animals that are accepted.