It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our striped skunk, Pepe.
Our animal team had noticed that Pepe hadn't quite been himself recently and was beginning to become poorly.
After giving him a once over and carrying out some tests, our vets discovered that Pepe unfortunately had heart disease. This is something that he would never recover from and something that we would have to manage until a point.
After some medication in the last week, and a short reprieve, it became evident to our keepers that the symptoms had returned and that Pepe was beginning to become uncomfortable.
Today our team made the very difficult, but very right decision to euthanise Pepe, to prevent deterioration and a loss in his quality of life.
Pepe de-bunked many myths about skunks over the years to thousands of people, young and old.
In recent months he was moved to his own quiet, plush pad to enjoy his retirement, which is exactly what he did and his keepers where there alongside our vet til the very end.
One of the centre 'originals', he and his big character will be hugely missed.