By HANK MURPHY

editor@woodcountymonitor.com

Animals belonging to some of the planet’s most endangered species live and breed on nine acres just outside Mineola at the Mini S Exotic Zoo. Last week, a dozen first- through fifth-graders attended a weeklong camp at the zoo, where they interacted with many of the unusual creatures and learned about their traits and behaviors.

Among their activities, the kids fed black and white ruffed lemurs and black capped capuchin monkeys, they learned how sloths evolved into nature’s slowpokes, observed fennec foxes and sand cats, and generally soaked in knowledge about some of the animal kingdom’s most exotic subjects.

Mini S Exotic Zoo is situated along FM 1799 near Lake Holbrook. The zoo is home to 200-300 animals representing 48 species, including some of the rarest and most endangered, according to the zoo’s founder Michelle Smith. She mentioned gibbons, ruffed lemurs and cotton-topped tamarin monkeys as a few of the endangered species found at Mini S Exotic Zoo.

Smith, a retired neonatal nurse practitioner, moved from the Metroplex with her husband to their place near Mineola about 10 years ago. “We moved here to have animals and be out in the country,” she said, noting that the zoo “is really my passion.”

Mini S Exotic Zoo, licensed by the USDA and Texas Parks and Wildlife, is not a public zoo. It offers people private encounters with rare animals, the majority of which are mammals. It takes in some rescue animals, though that’s not its primary focus.

The summer camps for children, the first of which was last week for kids in first through fifth grade, are meant to be educational in scope and teach children “respect and appreciation” for animals they may never see elsewhere, according to Smith. Mini S Exotic Zoo would like to have an association with local scouting programs too, she noted.

“We’d love to work with scouts. Really our goal is education. Teach kids about animals, teach appreciation,” Smith explained.

One kid who does appreciate the animals at Mini S is 9-year-old Micah Castorena of Watauga. Among the additions to her base of animal knowledge is that “some monkeys can laugh, and they eat rose petals,” she said. She is especially fond of fennec foxes and otters. “Otters are definitely my favorite animal,” she noted.

Haley Baker, 9, of Canton also is a big fan of the tiny fennec foxes, observing, “I think they’re real energetic.” Haley said she learned much about the animals at Mini S Exotic Zoo and enjoyed seeing them all.

“I’m an animal person,” Haley explained. “I want to be a zookeeper when I grow up.”