Feeding Time

The signs said not to feed the animals, but feeding the humans was more than O.K. at the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association’s 37th annual Beastly Ball on Sunday. Twenty Los Angeles restaurants and caterers, including Campanile, Parkway Grill, and Yamashiro, set up snack stations among the giraffes, chimpanzees, and golden-cheeked gibbons to create a moveable feast for the zoo’s 1,100 casually dressed supporters. The event raised a record-breaking $1.2 million.The zoo association's director of special events, Patti Glover, organized the tasty trek. When guests arrived, they picked up maps, itineraries, and auction handouts as well as colorful cotton totes made by Rwandan women whose husbands had been killed in the 1994 genocide. (Another politically aware touch was the goodbye gift of a small wooden animal carved by a reformed gorilla poacher in the Democratic Republic of Congo.)

People boarded trams and minibuses for the quick trip to the “upper Africa” portion of the zoo, where humans grazed while they watched zookeepers feed the bears and hippos. Half a dozen ethnic bands with names like Tropical Punch and Masanga Marimba entertained the crowds (but not all the animals—one docent observed that hours of drumming by Kenny Hudson and World Beat seemed to be making the tiger cranky).

From 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., guests were again herded onto the trams and minibuses for the trip back to the entry plaza, where a cluster of silent auction booths and more feeding stations (including Renaissance’s full spread for latecomers) awaited. A sea of cheerfully decorated tables, each topped with a blue or purple cloth—some with silky, sheer overcloths—furnished the plaza. Low-slung centerpieces consisted of platters covered with tropical flowers and toy rainforest animals and a Go, Diego, Go action figure. The zoo honored Chris Gifford and Valerie Walsh, the creators of Nick Jr.’s animated animal rescuer, Diego, in a brief outdoor ceremony where big animal buddy Betty White was the M.C. After a spirited live auction run by Christie’s Los Angeles’s Andrea Fiuczynski, guests danced to the sounds of Splash before trickling out at 11 p.m.