No place like home

Booming Houston 'burb is a best U.S city for families, says Fortune

Booming Sugar Land is ideal for families.

City of Sugar Land/Facebook

The "Sweetest City in Texas" has landed on a prestigious list of best places for families in the U.S. Fortuneputs Sugar Land No. 17 its new list of the 25 best places in the U.S. for families to live in 2022.

North Texas suburb Wylie is the only other Texas city to make the report, coming in at an impressive No. 2. Ann Arbor, Michigan, takes the top spot.

Fortune notes that Sugar Land, once home to a major sugar refinery, is one of Texas' fastest growing cities. The survey lauds Sugar Land's outstanding schools, ranked 20 percent rated above average by GreatSchools. To that end, the suburb boasts a 94 percent high school graduation rate, while nearly 60 percent of residents aged 25 and older holding a bachelor’s degree or higher.

As for quality of life, Sugar Land residents earn an average $121,665 per year, while the average home costs $399,250.

Healthcare also receives high marks, with Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Hospital cited for receiving the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 2016, the nation’s highest presidential honor for excellence in health care. Seniors enjoy many living options, including five assisted-living facilities with five-star ratings.

As anyone who's visited knows, the area has a strong sense of community, fostered in part by the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, which hosts such events as a Sugar Gala, an International Art and Kite Festival, and a Fall Fest.

As for No. 2-rated Wylie, Fortune writes: "With its start as a stop on the Santa Fe Railway in the 1880s, Wylie has always been a gathering place. In fact, because shops stayed open late to accommodate the railway visitors and business, one of the town’s nicknames became 'Wide-Awake Wylie.' The historic downtown continues that tradition of community today..."

To come up with its ranking, Fortune combed through mounds of data for almost 2,000 communities in the U.S.

families rankings

what's new at the zoo

Houston Zoo welcomes Kirby, a newly-born Asian elephant

The Houston Zoo Asian elephant herd increased by one last week.

Photo by Kevin Kendrick/Houston Zoo

Kirby is a healthy baby girl elephant!

The Houston Zoo is going to need a very big rattle for its latest addition. On Friday, November 15 at 3 pm, the zoo’s amiable Asian elephant matriarch Shanti, 34, gave birth to a baby girl named Kirby. This is Shanti’s seventh baby with longtime pachyderm boyfriend, Thailand, 58.

Kirby weighed 314 pounds at birth, quite a bit smaller than her older sibling Nelson, born in 2020, and slightly larger than her big sister Joy, born in 2017. Shanti’s pregnancy lasted 21 months, a common length for Asian elephants but still the second longest gestation in the mammal class after their African cousins.

Within six minutes, Kirby was on her feet, and she was walking within a half hour. The birth took place in the McNair Asian Elephant Habitat cow barn, where Shanti and Kirby will spend several more days before being sent out to public viewing.

The Houston Zoo’s elephant breeding program has been a vital part of increasing the Bornean elephant population since it began in 2007. Portions of entrance fees go toward the work of Dr. Nurzhafarina “Farina" Othman, who specializes in local education and activism in Borneo to ease the tensions between humans and elephants. Elephants have been known to decimate crops leading to conflict. Othman’s work has helped landowners in Borneo fund solutions that keep the elephant population alive. The zoo’s support was partially responsible for doubling the Bornean population in 2018.

Elephants have been a part of the Houston Zoo since it was founded. In 2017, the zoo opened the McNair Asian Elephant Habitat, a massive new enclosure with walkways for visitor viewing and pools for the elephants to frolic in and escape the Texas heat. The exhibit includes everything from fountains to a specialized puzzle tree that elephants can blow into for treats.

The zoo has also been on the cutting edge of animal medicine. In June, 40-year-old Asian elephant Tess was given the first ever mRNA vaccine for elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus (EEHV) 1A. Baylor College of Medicine pioneered this fight against a particularly deadly disease among elephants. All in all, it has been a big year for the zoo’s biggest residents.

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