LAHORE: After three years of wait the much loved animal of children, giraffe, can once again be seen at the Lahore Zoo by the end of the current month, officials say.

`The wait is over,` said Lahore Zoo Director Hassan Ali Sukhera while sharing the news that a trio of giraffes (a male and two females) would land at the zoo in the last week of April from South Africa.

The past trajectory of giraffes at the Lahore Zoo though is not pleasing. A trio of giraffes brought at the zoo in 2006 died one by one owing to various reasons till 2015. Even before this, in 1995 a giraffe died at the hands of a plastic bag that it gulped in from his barn thrown by some visitor.

What measures zoo is going to take for a safe and a longer stay of amazing creatures like giraffes coming to the zoo in the next 15 days? `We are revamping the paddock ofgiraffes, disinfecting it, bringing an overall improvement in their living place while also learning from the mistakes, the director told Dawn.

The giraffes being imported by a private animal supplier company would cost zoo Rs19 million besides the cargo and airfare charges, he said.

The trio of world`s most loved and amazing animal at present are going through their quarantine period in South Africa.

`No airline would cargo the animals to another country unless the airline is provided with quarantine certificate by the breeding farm and the health certificate from where the animals are being sent,` he said, adding that a 30-day quarantine period the trio would also have to go through after reaching here in Lahore.

However since the Lahore Zoo does not have any special place dedicated for quarantine the animals would be kept in their disinfected paddock.