Illegal fireworks continue across the Bay Area on a nightly basis, more than week away from the Fourth of July.
In Richmond, police have received five times more complaints of fireworks than last June.
And it is not just people and household pets that are disturbed by the ongoing noise and disruptions. Zookeepers at the Oakland Zoo say they are observing a fight for flight response in the animals.
"We have primates that start alarm calling or barking...and then we have other animals that will start running and others that are just trying to hide," said Colleen Kinzley, the zoo’s VP of animal care, conservation and research. "Giraffes, zebras. I mean even our jaguar, he’s a pretty nervous, reactive cat and so we have seen him kind of suddenly bolt from one place to another."
Kinzley lives on zoo grounds and knows firsthand just how loud the fireworks can get.
Some of the animals have interior shelters they can retreat to when the fireworks start, but others like the birds and chimpanzees are out in the open.
So, she and other zookeepers have been breaking out radios and TVs to try and mask the noise.
"That can help, just to have some background noise that’s constant. The thing that tends to cause animals to have a fearful reaction is the sudden BANG," she said.
Music will help too, especially heavy metal, "because it’s going to help to create that sort of continuous loud noise instead of: it’s relatively quiet and now there’s a sudden, you know, banging noise. That’s what the animals are reacting to."
She says this trick can be helpful at home for household pets as well.