prince charles

in keeping with my black and white theme, i'd like to post about one of my childhood favorites, prince charles. sadly he is no longer with us. i've missed him ever since the visit i returned and he wasn't there. he was the only zoo animal i knew by name. i still remember seeing him standing near the edge of the moat in the corner grotto where he lived. he was really something to see. i think as a white tiger ( he was a bengal) he was just so striking and different (back in my day) which is probably why he was a fav and why i remember him so vividly. ... when i started this blog i looked online for information about him and couldn't find any. one zoo friend showed me two items in the gift shop that have his photo. one is a book mark and one is a photo of him and his sister, who was an oranger. most of the photo items in the gift shop are not of our zoo animals, but this one photographer i think provides his photos of animals to such items, so we are lucky! i had seen the items but never knew it was prince charles. ... recently i found these great photos of him posted on flickr. the photos were taken in black and white and everything but prince charles was hand tinted. the photographer was kind enough to let me post them on my blog. ... i mentioned him to the bigcat keeper not long ago and she refered to him as "charlie"! so she knew him. i will try to get some more info on him soon, so please check back for that! for now, please enjoy these great photos of magnificent charlie!

thank you to gayle alstrom for sharing her photos! she was a friend to the zoo residents when she lived in san francisco years ago. you can view her other vintage sfzoo pix and other great captures here > http://www.flickr.com/photos/gayle_alstrom/
and follow her adventures since she left the city here >http://gaylealstrom.wordpress.com/

either my research skills are crappy (i don't think so!) or this one slipped by me, ... copied in part from > http://pjdesigns.com/pj/charley.htm

"Born at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1981, Prince Charles and his normal-colored sister, Whiskers, arrived at the San Francisco Zoo in 1982, to much fanfare. At the time, "Charley," as he is known by his keepers, was one of only 52 white tigers in the world, and was the first exhibited in the western United States."

i found it totally cool that he was the first exhibited in the west! i was right, in my day there just weren't that many and even finding photos of them wasn't easy since there was no internet! ... now that i have his sisters name i want to research her!