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Capital Grille Gives $20,000 In Meat From Blackout To Southwick's Zoo

MENDON (CBS) – The blackout in the Back Bay this week actually brought some good news – to the big cats at Southwick's Zoo in Mendon.

Free food.

Expensive free food.

"The Capital Grille gave us a call and said they had a bunch of meat, that it was perfectly fine, it just doesn't meet their standards for human consumption because they keep all of their meat fresh, it's never frozen and their electricity went out because of the big fire in Boston," Betsey Brewer, executive at Southwick's Zoo, told WBZ NewsRadio 1030 Friday.

WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Mike Macklin reports

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"They said that the cost of the meat was about $20,000 and it was 2,500 pounds of some of their top meat."

"They asked us if we would take it. They would donate it to our cats. We have two tigers, a lion and a leopard and Southwick's Zoo is a private zoo, so we don't get any government funding. So, anything like that is well appreciated."

The zoo posted several photos on its Facebook page of the cats devouring the meat.

Southwick's Zoo
The Capital Grille donated 2,500 pounds of prime New York sirloin lost in the Boston Blackout to Southwick's Zoo. (Photo courtesy: Southwick's Zoo)

"Our cats got to dine on Capital Grille steaks," Brewer said. "I don't get to dine on Capital Grille steaks very often."

"They loved them. The leopard was a little more interesting in what was going on all around him. But our lion is very food-motivated and he got a hold of a 15-pound chunk of meat, nobody was going to go anywhere near him. He was guarding that with his life."

Brewer said they usually feed their cats "a combination of what we call 'tube meat,' which is kind of a like a hamburger, but we also go beyond the standards of that and buy them chunk meat which has bone and hide because it's much healthier for them."

"But the bone-in steaks that they gave us, oh they love chewing on the bones."

Southwick's Zoo opens for the season April 14.

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