Mark Metcalf is an accomplished actor, writer and director now living in the Milwaukee area.

The day before my wife and I got married we took all our relatives to the Milwaukee County Zoo because it is a great zoo and it was a beautiful summer day.  Most of them seem to be beautiful in the summer.

We watched a calf being born in the Family Zoo.  A few years later we brought our own newborn son to the zoo on a vacation from Southern California.  I think it may have been that trip and this zoo that ignited a passion in him for animals and zoos that I believe will propel him into a career involved with animals and their well being.

When we finally moved to Milwaukee in 2000, we would make several trips each summer to visit the fennec fox in the Small Mammal House, Scarlet the Badger, the polar bears, the red panda, the cheetahs, the magnificent tiger, which my son still thinks he communicates with by roaring from around the corner.  And often he actually gets an answering roar back to my initial embarrassment and subsequent astonishment.

When he was younger, my son had his own names for most of his favorites.  Nowadays he spends more time studying the habitats and the behavior of the animals, deciding how he might do a better job of displaying them when he has his own zoo.  We go throughout the year to see the difference the seasons make on the animal behavior, but summer is the best when it’s crowded with neighbors, the sky is blue, with puffs of cloud roaming around, and there is so much green everywhere you feel like you’re in the forest and not the city.  It’s a great zoo.  I think one of the best in the country and we’ve seen a lot of them.

Mark Metcalf is an accomplished actor, writer and director now living in the Milwaukee area. He is best known for his roles in the film “National Lampoon’s Animal House”, and the TV shows “Seinfeld” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”