Bronx Zoo

Dr. Warren Wetzel,47, a surgeon specializing in the treatment of snakebites and other physical traumas, died Sunday at his home in the Bronx. The cause was prostate cancer, according to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.He was on the Einstein staff for 15 years and was chief of the Snake Bite Center at Jacobi Medical Center, a hospital affiliated with Einstein, from 1985 to 1994. He also was the snakebite consultant for the Bronx Zoo and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Association.

Detroit -- George Steinbrenner showed up at Tiger Stadium the other day and plopped himself down conspicuously in the front row, as if his frightening presence just might scare the New York Yankees straight.Funny thing, but at least for a few days, it seems to have worked.The Yankees reeled off four wins in their next six games, including two out of three against the Cleveland Indians, and lifted themselves out of the American League East cellar, leaving room to wonder whether the nightmare finally might be ending.

Even if the Orioles fail to catch the Bronx Bombers, the Baltimore Zoo has topped its venerable Bronx counterpart in one category: children's zoos.That's according to Allen Nyhuis, author of "The Zoo Book: A Guide to America's Best," which was released earlier this year by Carousel Press. Mr. Nyhuis will be at the Baltimore Zoo today to sign copies of his book and answer questions.In the 277-page book ($14.95), Mr. Nyhuis gives mostly capsule reviews of U.S. zoos along with some foreign zoos that he completed over a 3 1/2 -year period.

Road runners with a little mileage on them probably will remember the Baltimore Road Runners Club's Zoo Zoom 5-miler as one of the premier races on the fall calendar.The good news is that the Zoo Zoom, which will celebrate its 15th year Sept. 26, is getting bigger and better.Three years ago, the kids 1-mile walk/run was moved into the zoo grounds so that the children had the opportunity to observe some of the animals while getting exercise."Basically, what we're trying to do is make it [the Zoo Zoom]

The Baltimore Zoo announced yesterday its most blessed event of the year -- the birth of a pair of endangered Siberian tiger cubs.Watched over by an infrared video camera, mother Alisa gave birth to the 4-pound pair, gender as yet undetermined, between 3:15 p.m. and 4:45 p.m. Sunday in a bed of straw placed strategically in her den by keepers. A third cub, a female, was stillborn.Alisa was sent here in late winter by the International Wildlife Conservation Park (formerly the Bronx Zoo) on a long-term breeding loan -- chosen along with the Baltimore Zoo's male Fasier as the nation's most genetically desirable pair of captive, prospective Siberian tiger parents.

Hollywood can't touch this Baltimore soap opera -- a love triangle, of sorts, in which the guy and two gals in the melodrama were chosen for their roles by matchmakers.The cast features the sleek, amber-eyed Alisa, a Russian-born mother of two brought here from New York to have a relationship with the exotic Fasier.Unfortunately, this left the equally lovely but moody Roxanne out in the cold -- forced to leave Fasier, her companion since birth, just as they were coming of age.Oh, did we mention that the players are Siberian tigers?

Zoo is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as ''colloq. [The first three letters of Zoological taken as one syllable.] The Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park, London; also extended to similar collections of animals elsewhere.''The first collections of exotic animals of which we know were in ancient Egypt and China. In modern Europe, they were called menageries and belonged to potentates.During the French revolution, the mob looted the one at Versailles, eating some specimens and moving others to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.

NEW YORK -- The New York Zoological Society, deciding that the word "zoo" had become an urban pejorative with a limited horizon, announced yesterday that it was dropping the word from the names of the Bronx Zoo, the Central Park Zoo, the Queens Zoo and the Prospect Park Zoo.They are to be called "wildlife conservation parks" beginning Monday, said William Conway, president of the society. Mr. Conway concedes that he runs a great risk of bestirring much of the urban menagerie beyond the 10,000 creatures of the, uh, zoos.

The trail leads deep into a Southeast Asian tropical rain forest, a steamy jungle with lush vegetation that closes in around us. We brush aside the dangling vines and peer through the trees for any signs of life.From the distance white-cheeked gibbons approach, swinging through the treetops. A silvered leaf monkey perched on high cuddles her tiny youngster, whose bright orange fur makes him easy to see if the troop must flee.In a nearby mangrove swamp, a family of proboscis monkeys is busily playing, arguing, resting and tending their young at water's edge.

NEW YORK -- There is something noticeably different about the New York Yankees these days. Downright strange, in fact.It is not the presence of a new high-priced superstar, because Danny Tartabull and his five-year, $25 million contract are only the latest for a team that laid the foundation for baseball's eight-figure salary binge.Nor is it the absence of meddlesome owner George Steinbrenner, who hasn't been around the clubhouse or in his private box since being banished by commissioner Fay Vincent nearly two years ago."