San Diego Wild Animal Park

There comes a day when even the most popular of shows has to close. "Oklahoma!," "Cats," even "The Lion King" -- each dazzled Broadway for years and then departed. And so the elephant show at the Wild Animal Park, an attraction at Tembo Stadium since 1977, the most popular show in park history, will close Sunday. The puppet and bird shows will remain, but the five Asian elephants who star in the elephant show are off to a new gig.

While the Los Angeles Zoo is transferring its lone African elephant to a sanctuary, the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park is undergoing an elephant population boom. On Sunday, Litsemba, a 17-year-old African elephant, gave birth to a healthy male weighing between 250 and 300 pounds. Mother and calf are visible on the elephant cam on the park's website, www.wildanimalpark.org. Two other African elephants at the park -- Umoya and Lungile -- are pregnant and due later this year, officials said.

One of the three northern white rhinos at the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park has died, possibly of old age, officials announced Wednesday. Northern white rhinos are one of the world's most endangered species; only a dozen are known to exist. Nadi had been at the Wild Animal Park since 1972.

Aloud bird-like squawk breaks the night silence. Then the unmistakable sound of a lion's roar. An angry lion. The lion sounds close by but not as close as the snoring from the tent next door. The first thing to know about the appropriately named "Roar and Snore" sleepover program at San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park is that very little sleeping occurs. But the morning vista from the door of our tent more than makes up for the sleepless night.

The San Diego Wild Animal Park has closed its aviary because 10 lorikeet parrots have died within the last week. Park officials said that tests by county health officials ruled out West Nile virus. The cause is under investigation. It is unusual for birds living together to die all at once, according to park spokeswoman Christina Simmons. "We don't know if it's illness or feed or something else," she said. Simmons said officials at the park don't believe there was any danger to human health.

THE day's feature attraction, a female cheetah named Karoo, has just zipped down the dirt track at full throttle in a blur of orange and black. Now, it's Sven's turn. Sven is a shaggy golden retriever who has been Karoo's lifelong companion. On this Sunday morning at the Wild Animal Park in Escondido, he follows in the big cat's footsteps, but as he hits full stride, it appears lost on no one that, by comparison, he's slogging in slow motion. It's not that he \o7is\f7 slow.

The life of a duck isn't as leisurely as you might think. That much is becoming apparent to the Safari Cadets, a dozen children participating in an animal education program offered weekly at the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park in Escondido. Hunched over a table on a patio overlooking the Nairobi Village Lagoon, three cadets are engaged in a board game that underscores the perils of migration.

One of seven African elephants brought to the Wild Animal Park from Swaziland last year gave birth Monday to a 250-pound male calf, the first birth of an African elephant here in two decades. Ndlulamitsi, which means "taller than trees" in the Siswati language, gave birth with little difficulty and no intervention by zoo veterinarians or keepers. "Our philosophy here is: Let nature do its work," said Jeff Andrews, animal care manager at the 1,800-acre park.

ESCONDIDO The first of 10 California condor eggs has hatched at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, officials said Wednesday. The chick weighed 183 grams and was healthy when it was hatched Friday, they said. When the chick is 2 months old, park officials will release it and any other hatchlings into a habitat with two condors that will teach the chicks how to behave. The chicks could be released into the wild within a year, park officials said.