At the Lake District Wildlife Park, we like to have a bit of fun at Halloween! And most importantly our animals seem to enjoy it too.

Pumpkins are not only a great way to serve food to animals, but also provide an unusual treat. Our dedicated keepers spend hours carving out pumpkins and filling them full of healthy morsels. These amazing pumpkin creations get given to a variety of animals including polecats, squirrel monkeys, gibbons and tapirs. Squirrel monkeys and gibbons don’t hold back in pulling vegetables out of a pumpkin’s eyes and mouth. A bearded dragon or a stick insect will simply explore these unusual objects – and to a tapir a pumpkin is just a fancy food bowl that smells good!

Other Halloween creations include ghosts and ghouls made from animal-safe papier mache. The lynx get their exercise by jumping or climbing to extract their food from inside a ghostly figure. The black and white lemurs huddle around them together before having a peep inside.

Our Skeleton Trail has always been for the humans and a great way to learn some folklore. They are outside the animal enclosures and each one tells a story and has a letter to collect. These letters spell a spooky word for you to work out, all in the spirit of Halloween.

Whilst at the Lake District Wildlife Park we love folklore and a good tale, we also aim to dispel some of the myths around animals. Snakes are feared by many people mainly due to their venomous bites. Over thousands of years, some of the tales have resulted in snakes being thought of as evil spirits. At the Lake District Wildlife Park, Kasper our reptile and bug keeper can help with this. You may come away thinking that snakes aren’t that bad after all!

However, some myths and folklore just can’t be ignored and this year on Halloween itself our Wicked Witch will be making an appearance. Using her spell book and cauldron to make a potion, she will be calling upon Kasper for his expert knowledge on frogs, toads and creepy crawlies!