Busch Gardens’s Dancing Flamingo Dies After Customer Attack
Some guy in Tampa decided it would be a good idea to take his family to Busch Gardens on Tuesday. While enjoying their day at the popular theme park, this man, 45-year-old Joseph Anthony Corrao, decided it would also be a swell thing to go hang out with the animals in the Jambo Junction viewing area. And when he arrived at the flamingo exhibit in Jambo Junction, he perhaps believed it’d be an impressive feat to throw one around.
Joe Corrao reached into the flamingo pen and grabbed Pinky: the park’s infamous 19-year-old dancing flamingo. Then he threw Pinky on the ground so hard that her foot almost snapped off. Not that it mattered, because Pinky’s injuries were so bad that she was incapable of recovering. They euthanized her at the animal care center.
A very special flamingo:
Pinky was not just any flamingo — she was the dancing flamingo, the one that tapped her foot and boogied around in circles, a dance known as the “Flamingo Flamenco.”
Since the tender age of 2, Pinky was a dancing bird. Her “debut” happened on a nature show, according to spokeswoman for Busch Gardens Karen Varga-Sinka:
“While making an appearance with Jack Hanna, the team noticed that she was dancing on her own to get attention. Since then, she has danced for countless guests, school groups, media appearances, and national television shows.”
If Pinky was still with us, she’d be turning 20 next month and celebrating an astonishing 18-year-long dancing career — something that many humans can only dream of.
Why Pinky?
No one really knows why Joe Corrao chose to hurt a flamingo in front of his family and a crowd of onlookers. Apparently, he picked up a different flamingo first and put it down after people in the area very reasonably point out that he shouldn’t be doing that. For some reason, he proceed to snatch up Pinky.
Police arrived on the scene after a commotion was raised and took Corrao into custody. Officers arrested him on the grounds of animal cruelty and Corrao was assigned a $2,000 bond. Multiple news sources also point out that this is far from Joe’s first offense — his record describes a combo-crime that involved evading arrest, driving under the influence, and aggravated assault of a senior citizen. These offenses earned him a 2-year-prison sentence, from which he was just released in 2015.
The first judge he saw called him “beyond senseless” and borderline “depraved.” These seem like accurate words, although I wasn’t there in the Jambo Junction. All I know is what Busch Gardens said at the end of the whole fiasco — that Pinky will be sorely missed.
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