10 Things You Didn’t Know About Me | No. 1 I was a Zookeeper
I started this post as a “10 Things you Didn’t Know About Me” type thing, but then I started going way too in-depth with some of my items. And I felt they all deserved their own posts.
#1 - I was a zookeeper
For 2 summers in high school I worked at our local zoo. The first year I was a gift shop girl, ringing in admissions, stocking the shelves full of plushies, prepping and wrangling school groups, and running the cash register, which included counting the change that aforementioned school kiddies would pay in. Thanks to my training in Outdoor Emergency Care (for ski patrolling), I also became a medical assistant for our manager. So occasionally I got the call to grab the bag and head to a scene. Typically a scrape or a cut, the occasional heat sickness, but my favorite was a snake bite. I know, I sound sadistic, but this particular kid just wouldn’t give us the whole truth. According to him, he was walking by the pond when the snake jumped out and bit him. After pressing him a bit further (sadly we couldn’t pull out the interrogation lamp and water torture) he owned up that he was reaching into the pond to try to grab the snake when it snapped.
But the best year was the second. I got a job as birdkeeper, and while it had it’s grunt job moments (cleaning cages and washing out food and water dishes which had been terded in) it had some really cool moments as well. The day started early, feeding, watering and cleaning the cages of our outdoor residents. That meant I got to crawl in with the toucans daily. How many people get to hand feed sliced bananas to a real live toucan? As their job? Granted I was always on my toes, because birds are sneaky buggers and one little slip up may have left me explaining to the zoo owners why there are only 3 birds in that cage when there used to be 4.
Next step would be to bring our “commuters” out to their open air perches. Our two commuters were a bratty cockatoo and a blue hyacinth macaw with a beak that could break a broomstick in half and a record to go along with it. In one snap he had broken his owner’s (our head birdkeeper’s) wrist. I had to wrestle, trick, and bribe them out of their cages every day. Some days they’d go quietly, and other days…well, I still have scars from those other days. And I’d repeat this game at the end of the day when I had to bring them back in.
The rest of the morning was spent cleaning cages and feeding and exercising our other residents, who would get their moment in the sun at our noon time show. This was my favorite part of the day.
For two hours every day the head birdkeeper and I would have a slew of exotic birds out on our open air stage. We’d talk about each one of them, demonstrate tricks, and answer questions from the crowd, mostly children. Each bird had a personality, and each bird had a special trick we would try to have them show. Some days they would perform like a star, and other days they were grumpy and took pleasure in making us look ridiculous.
One day in particular, we had the bratty cockatoo’s pal out with us. His name was Fred and he was always a gamble thanks to his salty language. He used to grace the open air perch with his friend until he insulted a customer. From that point forward he was restricted to the barn unless he was having a “good” day, in which we would bring him to the show and let the audience pet him. On this fateful day we thought Fred was having a good day. I had bent down to show off these adorable little sun conures when I felt a very deliberate, and very sharp, pinch on my butt. I turned around to witness Fred booking it back to his perch, wings spread, CACKLING!
You can’t make that up.
You also can’t stay mad. Bruised butt and ego aside, it was funny. And the audience found it hilarious, including Sean, who had just happened to visit me that day. But you better believe I kept one eye on Fred the rest of that summer.
That summer I was exposed to some many other cool animals beyond my aviary realm.
I witnessed the Running of the Kangaroos - the day at the beginning of the warm season when the kangaroos are herded out to their summer enclosure from the barn by the zoo keepers. Did you know that to steer the kangaroo, you merely turn his tail? It’s like a rudder. Which of course is easier said than done when they’re hopping at full speed. I witnessed one of the six foot tall male keepers take an awful dive trying to steer a bitty baby roo.
A baby giraffe was born that summer, much to everyone’s excitement and delight. My friend took me into the barn to see it, which meant climbing up a ladder to the platform with the feeding trough. Momma Giraffe decided she was hungry and she wanted the food that I was leaning over. Do you know how BIG a giraffe head is? Neither did I til it firmly nudged me out of it’s way. It was as big as my torso.
And to cap off the summer of babies, a brand new leopard cub joined our crew. Once afternoon my sister (who had started working in the gift shop) and I went to walk and play with it after hours. There’s nothing like having someone thrust a large, wiggly, powerful baby jungle cat into your arms. You realize quickly that those are big paws with big claws on the ends and he’s batting at your ponytail. You also think for the first time that your hair is really close to your face. We watched as the cub played with the resident tortoise, jumping on its back and riding it around the room pawing at the shell’s holes. We watched as the tortoise drew in its head and walked straight into the wall, bumping the unsuspecting cub in the head.
It was an incredible summer, and an amazing opportunity to witness so many amazing creatures up close. You can’t get that kind of experience out of a book.
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