It's time for Positively Kansas.

Coming up, we'll investigate how play can sometimes be the most important thing you can do.

You'll see how table tennis is creating friendships and sharpening the minds of some Kansas seniors.

Also, one of the first residents of the Sedgwick County Zoo is back.

We'll catch up with Brockett, the tortoise who had been gone for years.

See how this master escape artist is settling back into his old digs.

And in our Kansas Wild Edge report, we visit a prairie dog community where there's always something interesting to watch.

I'm Sierra Scott.

Join us for those stories on this edition of Positively Kansas.

The power of play has come into focus for some Kansas seniors.

They found a way to have fun and create friendships.

But perhaps even more important, their play could have important physical and mental benefits that allow them to live their best lives longer.

Chris Frank has the story.

On most days, you will find a trio of table tennis players here at Wichita's East YMCA.

We play almost every day.

So it must be pretty fun.

Debi Takamoto regularly plays across the table from Bow Chin, a native of Shanghai, China, or she plays opposite Quang Ly, who grew up in South Vietnam before immigrating to the U.S..

I come to U.S. on September seven, 79, 1979.

That was four years after the United States ended its military presence in Vietnam.

Ly was about 28 years old when he arrived in Wichita.

He says he did not play table tennis after coming to the States, but Ly says he did play as a teenager in Vietnam.

In my country, I recall ping pong.

But when I come to the United States, they call a table tennis.

So I, I played Pong when I was 15, 16 years old.

And I played for like about two years over there.

Over there being Vietnam.

His attention in his latter 20s, like so many other Vietnamese, then turned to escaping communism and finding political freedom in the United States.

He worked for a local Catholic Social Services refugee camp for nine months after arriving in Wichita.

When that ended, he got a job at Beechcraft, where he worked for 21 years until his retirement.

Ly says he didn't play table tennis for more than 40 years during his working years.

When I got a partner, so I come to Andover to play.

Lee says he played terribly when he started playing after a four decades absence, but he kept working at it with his new playing partners.

At that time, after three or four weeks.

Then I pick up my my skill Eventually, Ly started playing with Bao Chin, Debi Takamoto.

They started playing among themselves in 2021.

At the Andover YMCA.

But they had to move their workouts to the Wichita East Y after the Andover tornado made a direct hit on the Andover YMCA.

Ly acknowledges he had to practice a lot to get his useful playing skills back.

These players have a competitive fervor, but in workout sessions like this one, they may not even keep score.

Instead, it's a time to work out and hone their skills.

They say on any given day, any one of them can come out with the top score because they're fairly evenly matched.

To me, it's it's a great sport and a lot of people just think it's a recreational sport.

And that's where the word Ping-Pong came from.

It's actually from one of the big toy companies.

According to historians, table tennis originated in Victorian England about 1890 as an after dinner parlor game.

The game quickly caught on and by 1902 the first world championship was held.

According to Wikipedia.

Ping pong was trademarked in 1901 by a British manufacturer which marketed ping pong game sets.

That British company later sold the ping pong trademark rights to the American Toy and game company Parker Brothers, which enforced the trademark rights on the ping pong name.

The broader and more worldwide acceptable name is table tennis, which is associated with the names of national and international table tennis associations.

I call it table tennis, but of course when I was younger I called it ping pong.

Table tennis has come a long way since its humble beginnings.

Early day cork, then rubber balls, were replaced with hollow plastic balls, greatly increasing the speed of the game along with the development of better paddles, also called bats.

It's estimated that more than 300 million play table tennis worldwide, ranging from the occasional recreational players to club players all the way up to professionals.

The speed of the game greatly increases the higher the skill level.

Table tennis has been an Olympic sport since the Seoul Olympics in 1988.

Now, the Japanese dominated the sport in the 1950s and into the 1960s until the Chinese government made a competitive effort to develop highly skilled players.

Since then, Chinese players have regularly dominated at the highest levels, including the Olympics.

Friendly table tennis competition was also used as a diplomatic way to open up relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China.

In 1971, China received a delegation of American players for public exhibitions there.

Later, the U.S. received the Chinese players for exhibition play in American cities.

The exchange became known as ping pong diplomacy and preceded President Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972.

It was a turning point in China-American relations and table tennis helped pave the way.

Takamoto says, she's played in some senior tournaments and looks forward to playing in the Kansas Senior Games.

There is a Wichita Table Tennis Association.

It's a sanctioned club.

The Wichita State University Table Tennis team practices there.

Well, we enjoy just being with each other, first of all, but playing a game that we all enjoy.

Bao Chin grew up in Shanghai, China, where he learned table tennis in elementary school.

Chin emigrated to the U.S. in 1992 and lived in New York City.

He later moved to Wichita.

He is 73.

Through translator Quang Ly, Jin says he likes to play table tennis to stay healthy.

These players say their overarching motivation for playing is to improve their health.

That for my healthy situation, I try to make myself healthy so I can live a little bit longer.

Ly says he knows he's getting a good workout when he moves enough to perspire.

When you play ping pong and make your body move and then when you move a lot, your sweat come out.

Takamoto says she gets a good physical workout playing table tennis.

I think moving your feet a lot is helpful.

She says table tennis can also help with a person's mental health.

It's supposed to be one of the best things to prevent Alzheimer's because you're thinking, Where's the ball coming?

How should I hit it?

How hard should I hit it?

Where are they?

Should I hit it to where they're not?

Or should I hit it right at them?

So you're doing a lot of thinking while you're actually playing the game.

There are scientific studies which say playing table tennis may help decrease cognitive decline and improve long term memory.

Fast paced tactical, physical fun.

But could table tennis help Alzheimer's patients?

Scientists at King's College are now leading research into the benefits of the sport on a disease that has a devastating impact on the lives of many, ebbing away at people's memory, concentration and judgment.

The Letters B A T in the BAT Foundation is an acronym for Bounce Alzheimer's Therapy.

BAT researchers say their studies indicate.

Playing table tennis regularly can delay the onset of Alzheimer's by as much as five years.

Dr. Rachel Brown is a Wichita psychiatrist whose exercise work out of choice is powerlifting.

Dr. Brown is professor and chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the KU School of Medicine in Wichita.

Be patient from the floor and lock those knees out as fast as you can after your pause.

She agrees, regular table tennis playing and all rigorous exercising can have physical and mental health benefits.

So just do something and it will help you physically, but will also help you with your cognitive function as well.

And that's also really important as we see memory loss happening to us all as we get older, the increasing numbers of people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, that exercise helps with that too.

And we know that.

Takamoto says tournament players get rating scores according to their skill level.

She hopes to see her national rating score increase as she improves her play.

I just think as you improve, that's part of the enjoyment of seeing yourself do better at getting the ball over.

So when we were young children, we may have simply played what we call ping pong just for the fun of it.

We were happy just to sustain a short volley.

Ly, Chin, and Takamoto also enjoy keeping a volley going for a while.

For them, table tennis gives them a competitive outlet, but also an opportunity to gain friendships and health benefits simply by batting a plastic ball back and forth across the table tennis net.

In East Wichita, this is Chris Frank for Positively Kansas.

You can have fun playing table tennis at home, but experts suggest if you want to improve your game, join a club.

It's easy to search the Internet for a club near you.

We cover a lot of towns here on Positively Kansas, but there's one we've never visited that is until now.

Mike Blair takes us there in this week's edition of Kansas Wild Edge.

It's Sunrise on the Kansas Prairie.

A natural city is slow to wake up.

It's a prairie dog town.

And the stars of the show are in no hurry to begin the day.

Prairie dogs, social diggers that live in colonies are always late risers.

Food is plentiful and close as a burrow entrance.

There's plenty of time for the work of the day.

Prairie dogs are the chief residents and engineers of their towns.

But only certain grassland types will do.

Tall grass prairies, where dense grass grows more than two feet tall, restrict these animals movement and ability to spot danger.

Short grass prairies and overgrazed pastures where grasses tend to be sparse and seldom get more than a foot tall, make ideal living and feeding areas.

Generally, prairie dogs live in dry western parts of the Great Plains.

Though these towns are dug by and for prairie dogs, a host of wildlife gathers there.

The Burrow Networks make ideal shelters for rodents, reptiles, insects and even birds.

Watchful prairie dogs afford free predator warnings through their complex alert system, sentries are always on guard to bark cautions of approaching trouble.

So a variety of wildlife constructs their own homes within the borders of an active town.

And this creates a huge community complex of animals and their predators.

Prairie dog towns are excellent places to watch all kinds of daytime wildlife.

Summer is a time of plenty when food is abundant and life is easy.

Prairie dogs of all ages feed on grasses and forbs keeping most vegetation trimmed 3 to 5 inches tall for easy viewing and communication within the town.

Besides feeding, daily work involves digging and maintaining burrow systems.

This important chore goes on year round.

As pups mature in late summer, They move out of their nursery and dig their own homes near the edge of the coterie.

Tunnels average 4 to 5 feet deep and are usually around 25 feet long.

They contain separate rooms for storing food, nurseries, toilet and listening posts.

Females will stay in the home area throughout their lives.

The young males eventually move and establish their own breeding territories away from related females.

For the same reason, mature breeding males often cycle into new coteries every year or two to avoid mating with their daughters.

Resulting encroachments may lead to vicious fights and injuries.

Not surprisingly, prairie dogs often conflict with man's plans for the land, blamed for dangerous holes that can threaten and injure domestic livestock and even competition for food that affects grazing.

Prairie dogs have been under assault since settlers tamed the prairie, and their tendency to invade crop lands only heightens this battle.

About 99% of all black tailed prairie dogs have been extirpated in the last 150 years.

But where they're still present, they provide a fascinating look at an iconic plains wildlife species.

It's worth finding and visiting a prairie dog town to see these unique habitats.

Indeed, it's a trip to an earlier time when the natural prairie still marched to its timeless rituals.

I'm Mike Blair for Positively Kansas.

Next week, Mike will show us how to enjoy amazing wildlife encounters while sitting in your car.

That shold be interesting.

Now to one more animal story.

An original member of the Sedgwick County Zoo is back home that after being loaned to other zoos for several years.

Chris Frank has the story of Rocket, an unlikely escape artist who goes nowhere fast.

The Big Turtle.

Which one do you like?

The bigger turtle or the small?

I like the big one.

Young and old alike are being drawn to and asking questions about this giant tortoise at the Sedgwick County Zoo.

That big one there is named Rocket.

Now, first off, you've got to believe someone must have been having fun when they named this giant tortoise “Rocket ”.

A rocket travels fast.

But tortoises aren't known for speed despite the tale of the hare and the tortoise.

And visitors to the Sedgwick County Zoo can see Rocket doesn't seem to move a whole lot faster than a snail much of the time.

How old is he?

Rocket hes about 90 years old.

Yeah.

There are two much younger 12 year old female tortoises.

Rocket shares exhibit space with.

They don't move quickly either.

He's about 500 pounds.

Oh, wow.

Yet despite being about 90 years old and carrying around 500 pounds in that shell, Rocket is known as an escape artist.

Now, you wouldn't think a 500 pound, 90 year old tortoise would be a speed king.

He's not.

But Rocket here is an escape artist, and the zoo had to deal with that.

Yeah, he was certainly an escape artist.

Chris Williams is the zoo's manager of ecto-therms, like cold blooded animals.

It includes overseeing the giant tortoises and answering visitors questions.

So they'll eventually get the size of him.

Now, it may seem hard to believe something so large that moves so slowly can escape anything.

But first, a little more about Rocket.

Rocket is one of the original residents of the Sedgwick County Zoo, first coming here in 1972.

Rocket would have been about 40 then.

Rocket is an Aldabra giant tortoise.

Aldabra tortoises are native to the Aldabra Atoll and part of the Aldabra group of islands in the Indian Ocean, about 700 miles east of Africa.

Those are part of the outer group of the Seychelles Islands.

There used to be tens of thousands of the Aldabra tortoises there.

But seafaring sailors and others nearly decimated the giant tortoises as a food source.

Because of that, the giant tortoise species is listed as vulnerable by conservation groups.

Rockets two exhibit neighbors are of the Galapagos species, which are also threatened.

Those giant tortoises are native to South America.

The younger and smaller tortoises are named Inés and Soledad.

They're both Galapagos tortoises, so they're off the coast of South America, Rocket is an Aldabra.

So off the coast of Africa, right above Madagascar.

So different species.

But these are the the last two remaining species of giant tortoises that there are today.

Rocket was on display for decades in the Amphibians and Reptiles exhibit.

But in 2009, Rocket discovered with his size, he could climb out of his enclosure into an outer gallery.

So he'd have to be walked all the way around the building and back into his exhibit.

It would take several hours for zookeepers to get Rocket back where he belonged.

It was more than just a nuisance.

Rockets well-being was at stake.

This wasn't a once occurring thing.

It happened several times to the point where, especially in the wintertime, when we have to walk them all around the building, it's not good for him to be outside in that cold of temperature.

So after escaping several times, here is when management finally decided that it's probably best that he goes to another zoo until we can build a new exhibit for him.

So we actually sent him to the Tulsa Zoo in 2009, and that's actually where I met him.

So I used to be a zookeeper at Tulsa, and I ended up being one of his main caretakers there.

But even the Tulsa Zoo had to modify its exhibit to keep Rocket confined.

So Tulsa sent him up to the Bronx Zoo.

In 2014.

Rocket made it to the top.

The big lights.

The big show.

Rocket was on loan to the Bronx Zoo, one of the largest zoos in the U.S..

Rocket has a special place in all of our hearts here at Sedgwick, so we didn't want to completely give him up to another zoo.

We just wanted to loan him, and it helps out other zoos, too.

Like I said, the Bronx was opening a new exhibit, so it helped showcase a giant tortoise for their exhibit.

Again, Rocket was simply on loan to those zoos.

The intention always was to eventually get Rocket returned here.

It just took the right exhibit so that this Houdini of giant tortoises wouldn't escape again.

Rocket, Inez and Soledad aren't housed in the amphibians and reptiles building.

They're in the Australia South America exhibit next door to some noisy but colorful neighbors.

Rocket returned in May of 2022 and greeted the public the next month.

Riders on the new Safari Express train get a good view of the tortoises as the train goes by.

But if you want to learn about them, try to be on site when zookeepers like Williams are around to answer your questions.

Turtles are generally aquatic.

They usually have either flippers or webbed toes.

Tortoises kind of have clunky legs, more meant for walking on the ground.

And what seems to fascinate most is how long these tortoises can live.

They can live to be well over 200 years old.

So Rocket is very well about middle aged.

So he could have a long ways to go.

There are reports of tortoises living 250 years.

So think of that longevity this way.

You, your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren might all be able to visit one of these giant tortoises in their lifetime.

And that long life may yet give Rocket enough time.

Come on, Rocket.

To figure out how he can escape again.

At the Sedgwick County Zoo, Chris Frank for Positively Kansas.

It's important to know that Rocket and the other giant tortoises only get out to be seen in the warmer months.

They're not on display in the winter.

Well, if you have a story idea for us or just a question or comment, please send an email.

We always enjoy hearing from you.

Until next time.

I'm Sierra Scott, we'll see you soon.