Quillbur is a friendly, 13-year-old North American porcupine who came to Cleveland Metroparks Zoo in 2010 when he was only a few months old. Porcupines are North America’s second largest rodent, with only beavers being bigger.
Despite what you might see in cartoons, porcupines don’t “throw” their quills, which are made of keratin like hair and nails. But they will raise their hollow quills with barbs at the end in a defensive mode. And quills (a porcupine has about 30,000) will detach easily from the animal.
“People don’t understand that you can pet a porcupine if you do it the right way,” says Sally Messinger, whose name graces the Don and Sally Messinger Nature Innovation Station at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. “Quillbur is my favorite ambassador zoo animal. He comes right up to me. He’s a vegan like me so we have a lot in common. Except I like broccoli and he doesn’t. He’ll eat squash, carrots and pineapple from my hand. But if it’s broccoli, he’ll wait to see if there is any other food.”
Sally Messinger is a veteran real estate professional with Howard Hanna Real Estate Services, and Don Messinger has been a partner with the Thompson Hine law firm since 1976.
The Cleveland area couple donated funding to create a new home for the zoo’s ambassador animals, which opened just over a year ago. In addition to an improved habitat, the role of ambassador animals is being “re-imagined,” according to Elena Less, an associate animal curator with the zoo.
Traditionally taken outside the zoo for educational purposes, the animals are primarily now invited to participate in on-site programming. That includes several ambassador species (think snakes) living outside the Nature Innovation Station, plus those who call the enhanced area home. Quillbur’s immediate neighbors include a barn owl, barred owl, Eurasian eagle-owl, hooded vulture and a white stork.
Ambassador animals are chosen for their affinity for humans and their comfort level among strangers or groups of people. Sometimes, though, they prefer observing instead of performing.
“Fringe, our barred owl, likes people. But she was showing us that she didn’t want to be part of a program, such as flying and landing on a gloved hand,” says Less. “So this new space is perfect for her. We made her an exhibit animal. She is in one of our front stalls and she can see people all the time. She chooses to spend her time staring at people rather than performing.”
The Nature Innovation Station (within the Australia Adventure area and once the location of a rental pavilion) is four times the size of the area where the ambassador animals had been living. It provides more space for birds to fly and practice vertical jumping, which is important for muscle development, additional natural light for all the animals and more opportunity for visitors to see zoo staff train and care for them, according to Less.
“Zoos have changed so much. They just aren’t places where people come to be entertained. We want that to happen, of course, but we also want people to know more about animals and to learn more about conservation and the research here. But you can’t teach people about animals unless you can see them,” says Messinger, talking about the ambassador animals that many zoo visitors could not view before their new home was created. “One of the first animals they brought out a year ago was one of the owls. She sat there all day, just looking at the sky.”
All of the Nature Innovation Station animals are those “that can live outdoors in our climate,” says Less. But the hooded vulture and white stork are taken indoors during the coldest parts of the winter.
Messinger, a vocal animal advocate, had been on the zoo’s board of directors for 12 years and is now an emeritus director (as of December). She has also contributed to the cost of feeding zoo animals, especially the koalas, whose eucalyptus leaves are the zoo’s most expensive menu item. That dinner help was imperative during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown when the zoo wasn’t open and admission money was lost.
But Messinger and her husband wanted to do even more. Messinger said it was meant to be that after spending 42 years in real estate finding houses for Northeast Ohioans that she was able to also find homes for ambassador animals.
“We could have given the money to the zoo in our wills. But I think if you have a cause, it’s important to support it while you are alive,” says Messinger, whose seven grandchildren, ages 9 to 16, think it’s pretty cool that their grandparents have a sign at the zoo with their name on it. “When we help animals survive, we also help people survive.”
Sarah Crupi, CEO of the Cleveland Zoological Society (the zoo’s nonprofit partner), knows Messinger has a lifelong respect and love for animals. Crupi says the Nature Innovation Station was an excellent project to showcase the Messingers’ generosity because of the impact it has on both the animals and the zoo, and the zoo’s many guests.
“Sally has a true real passion for animal welfare, healthy animal diets and healthy living spaces,” says Crupi. “Sally and Don have been exceptionally generous to the Cleveland community, both personally and through their work with Howard Hanna and Thompson Hine. We were able to build this project because we had their support.”
Messinger is amused by a tradition that has begun at the Nature Innovation Station. People she or her husband know, and even people she doesn’t know, email her photos of themselves by the Station’s sign. Messinger likes to think it is a visitor’s way of saying hello, thanking the couple for making the new animal home possible and appreciating what the zoo has done for the animals.
“I get to enjoy the animals’ new home over and over again when I see the photos. I love the zoo. We would have done this home even if they would not have put our name on it,” says Messinger. “It’s the most important thing I have ever done in Cleveland.”