Sussex animals get early visit from Father Christmas
Santa has been busy handing out some festive treats
Father Christmas has made an early trip to a Sussex zoo this week.
Santa Claus visited Drusillas Park to give the animals there their Christmas treats.
He made a special stop to feed the penguins, as well as the lorikeets and lemurs.
Head keeper, Gemma Romanis, said:
"After a month of not seeing any visitors our animals were really starting to miss people!
"They have our company every day, but it's not the same as having crowds of interesting faces to look at and interact with.
"The minute Santa walked into the zoo; our animals went wild with excitement!
"The monkeys couldn’t get enough of Santa, they all ran to the front of their enclosures to have a really good look!
"I think Maja the red panda was the most excited to see Santa.
"Maja is a bold and playful character on a normal day, but when he saw Santa he came running straight up, held onto Santa’s hand whilst he ate his Christmas treat of panda cake and then really didn’t want to let him go!
"Maja followed Santa all the way the door of his enclosure, it was actually really lovely to see the instant bond!"
"It was such a special treat to have Santa in the zoo!
"Of course the zoo team were thrilled to see Santa too, many of them didn’t know he was coming so it was really lovely to see their faces light up when he rounded the corner and gave a merry ‘HO HO HO!’.
"Our animals really enjoyed meeting Santa.
"We didn’t actually expect the reaction we got!
"It really brought a smile to my face to see how happy the animals were to meet him.
"What a great day of Christmas magic!"
Santa Claus has now settled into his Christmas Cottage at Drusillas.
You can book tickets to meet him, and find out what else is on at Drusillas this Christmas, on the website.