CLEVELAND — Did you hear the news? The sun is just gonna up and quit on us for a few minutes in the middle of the darned day on Monday during the total solar eclipse.
Of course, humans are reacting to the celestial event in our predictable human way: organizing day drinking events, exploiting the occasion for financial gain, with a smattering of unnecessary fear-mongering for good measure. You know...human stuff.
How are animals going to react to the eclipse, if at all? Will they even notice? Will the random mid-day darkness upset and confuse them? Or is this just the chance they’ve all been waiting for to take over while our guards are down?
With such an array of erratic animal eclipse questions, where better to go than right to the source? Andi Kornak, deputy zoo executive director of the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo was kind enough to speak with me on the subject.
"Much like animals in our own backyard, animals at the zoo are going to react in a similar way. They'll act similar to when it's dusk time," she explained. "When the sun is setting, you'll hear birds chirping. They'll start to go up to roost for the evening. They'll get quiet while it's dark, and then when it starts to light back up, they wake up, they start chirping and go back to their normal life."
And let's be fair, here in Cleveland our normal weather patterns provide plenty of dark and overcast days, even when there isn't an eclipse happening.
"If you think about it, the eclipse is going to be similar to 80% of the days in Cleveland where it could be really cloudy. The sun goes away, it gets dark or storm rolls in. Animals are very adept to shifting with those changes," Kornak said.
Naturally, I had to take the opportunity to offer all of my favorite species a little soft encouragement. And I'll be back here at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo on Monday to see exactly how our animal friends behave during this once-in-a-lifetime event -- which just so happens to also fall on National Zoo Lovers Day.