If you know what county is home to Hochatown, you might be an Okie. Or you might be one of the 40 million people who has viewed an adorable video that the Hochatown Petting Zoo posted Monday.
Four kittens, two baby skunks, two young raccoons and a calm fawn put on a 35-second show for zoo staff who announced to the world, “You can tell it’s baby season here!!”
Tugging at the apparent heartstrings of the Facebook public, the McCurtain County cornucopia of mammalian youth sniffed, nuzzled and stumbled around a play pen while birds in the licensed wildlife rehabilitation facility offered frightening screams that sound uncomfortably human.
Despite its vertical nature, the video has been shared almost 1 million times on Facebook as of this post’s publishing, and Google Trends indicated Tuesday evening that “Hochatown” had reached its highest possible relative search interest.
The video was posted at 5:22 p.m. Monday and spread quickly. Four hours later, the facility posted a follow-up message in response to the attention.
We are simply amazed at how much love and attention our video has receive (sic) of our little orphans! Thank you very much, everyone. To clarify on this, along with being a petting zoo, we also do Licensed Wildlife rehabilitation through the state. Any wildlife you see us post, are all orphaned or injured. We do education with the wildlife in our care (…)
Staff appeared to answer other questions in the statement, too.
All wildlife is/will be released once they’re at the appropriate age and possess the skills needed to return to the wild. The babies in that video are not kept together all the time, we thought it would be a cute shot to show everyone of all our little ones together while we cleaned out their beds and prepped their bottles for feeding time. Please remembered (sic) wild animals, while adorable, do not make and are not pets.
It’s probably a good reminder that skunks do not make good pets.
Here’s another: If you find yourself traveling to the Hochatown Petting Zoo owing to this video, remember the community’s new distillery, even if the town lacks census data.
