(WLUK) — You may have pumpkins sitting on your porch, or around your house that you’re not quite sure what to do with. Now that Halloween is over, that doesn’t mean your pumpkins need to go to waste.
Rather than just letting them rot, some organizations will take them off your hands to help some of our four-legged friends.
At the NEW Zoo. some animals like the goats, moose and porcupines like to eat them. But Assistant Zookeeper Brent Koerner says even other creatures, you may not expect, will find a use for your pumpkins.
“Our birds like to peck at them and punch holes in them. They’ll eat the seeds out of there. Our cats, believe it or not, yes, they’re carnivores but they like to scratch them. Sometimes they do like to bite them and tear them into shreds and then we’ll pick them up the next day,” said Koerner.
Koerner says the zoo will sometimes carve the pumpkins, so they become toys or food enrichment. However, he says the zoo can’t accept any from the community that’ve been carved already…