12-05-2025
Animal moms at the Sacramento Zoo get flowers for Mother's Day, too — and eat them
Like many American moms, Serai the clouded leopard has raised her children under almost impossible circumstances. On Mother's Day, assembling three bouquets of edible flowers into a bowl and freezing them with a dead rat pup in the center seemed like the least that Sacramento Zoo staff could do for her.
Rachel Winkler, the zoo's animal care supervisor, made edible bouquets for the 13-year-old Serai and other animal parents to enjoy Sunday. Many clouded leopards refuse to raise their cubs in captivity, said Melissa McCartney, senior manager of animal care. But Serai, a Virginia native who moved to the California capital from Miami, has declined any childcare for three litters.
'She's one of the few clouded leopards that just always takes care of her own kids, and is like, 'I got this. Don't do it for me,'' McCartney said. 'She's like Wonder Mom.'
She was also separated from her children's father, Rajasi, who was in the off-exhibit enclosure. Although Serai is a dedicated mother to her cubs, she has a rocky relationship with their dad.
''In heat,' do you know what that means?' animal keeper Lizzie Denis asked. 'If she is not in heat, then she doesn't like him.'
Other animals who received treats were less outstanding as parents but still, of course, deserved some appreciation. McCartney, who runs the zoo's captive breeding program that includes 21 endangered thick-billed parrots, watched two immature birds hassle their parents over the corn-and-orchid bouquet, even though they're old enough to feed themselves.
She explained that the younger birds — last year's hatchlings — aren't old enough to have kids of their own, but they will hang around their mother and father during nesting season. They'll observe and learn how to raise baby birds, although the teens contribute essentially nothing to the hands-on parenting effort beyond making noise.
The breeding program lets the birds do all the parenting, partly because thick-billed parrots are endangered and McCartney and her conservation colleagues want the animals to potentially be releasable. The green-and-red birds are the only alpine parrot, she said, and they love pine nuts and can thrive in the snow.
'They're such a specialized parrot,' she said.
Because breeding season is coming up (the females usually lay eggs in June or July, and the eggs hatch in August or September), 'It's also a good time for males to impress their mate… 'Do you like my nest box? There's corn.''
Across the zoo, Dahlia the mongoose lemur, had tepidly licked at her frozen bouquet. She's been separated from her daughter, Skoche, who, at 2, is sexually mature and thus ready to start her own matriarchal lemur troop. If she and her mother were in the same room, Winkler said, they might 'squabble.'
While matriarchal power struggles may not resonate with human women, another mother at the zoo faced an all-too-familiar Mother's Day letdown. Bouquets went out to the parrots, Dahlia, Serai, the giraffes, and a Wolf's guenon monkey and mother of five named Mimi who also received a grooming from her son, Vinnie. But what about Kiki?
'I felt so bad,' said Winkler, shaking her head at Denis. 'We walked by the meerkats, I thought, 'Oh my god, I didn't do anything for Kiki.''
Denis cackled and said, 'She literally lives with four of her daughters.'
The human mother of one was looking forward to having a margarita at her own celebratory dinner later. Earlier, looking at the giraffes, she said that she felt a greater kinship with the animal parents since having her own daughter two years ago. Grinning, she turned to Winkler.
'It's OK,' she said. 'If it makes you feel any better, when I was cleaning the enclosure this morning, I looked over at her and was like, 'Happy Mother's Day.''
