Alpaca dies after flooding at Salisbury Zoo in Md.

Recovery efforts are underway at the Salisbury Zoo, where an alpaca died amid flooding from heavy rains in the mid-Atlantic region last week.

Fallen trees, plus mud and debris covered public pathways Monday afternoon after the flooding in Salisbury and along the Wicomico River.

“We have employees who have worked here 30 plus years, and no one can really remember flooding to this extent,” says Ralph Piland, director of the Salisbury Zoo.

Flooding ran roughly “knee deep”, according to Piland.

He tells 47ABC his staff spent the weekend and Monday cleaning out buildings affected by high waters. They also returned the many animals relocated to the zoo’s health facility back to their exhibits.

Mary Seemann, marketing and development associate for the Salisbury Zoo, says alpacas were among the most vulnerable during the flood. Their exhibit is one of the closest to the river.

The alpaca, which died last week, was reportedly found early Friday morning lying down in water. It died Friday afternoon.

“We believe it got hypothermia and we’re still waiting for the necropsy, but keepers did all they could,” says Seemann.

According to zoo officials, an exam revealed the presence of fluid in the alpaca’s lungs. Additional testing of lung tissue is underway.

Even with the water receded by Monday, Piland says there’s still work to be done.

“The thing that concerned us the most once it appeared that the water level was stable were what was happening with the trees,” he says. “We had a tree come down on our perimeter fence near our deer exhibit and we had a large tree come down by our burrowing owl exhibit.”

While it’s too soon to put an exact dollar amount on the damage to the zoo, Piland says he’s thankful it’s more about cleaning rather than fixing.

There are no specific donation items they are in need of right now, but Piland says anyone who is interested in becoming a ‘zoo member’ is welcome.