When
you were in school, what classes or training prepared
you to work as a zookeeper?
I made the decision to become a zookeeper when I was at Southern
Illinois University, so I majored in zoology. I took courses
in physiology, biology, classification, chemistry, embryology,
math and statistics. I also have a degree in Forest Science,
with a specialization in wildlife management.
What
is
it like to be a zookeeper?
It is the best job in the world. You’re outside and
you’re around animals. No two days are alike - there
are always new challenges. We may get a new animal and have
to introduce it to the others. An animal may have babies,
get sick or die. I like to be really busy, and we usually
are.
Besides
feeding and cleaning up after the animals, what else
do you do to provide for their care?
Feeding and cleaning are only a small part of what we do
every day. We spend time just observing the animals. In nature,
animals don’t show it when they’re sick because
it makes them vulnerable to predators. So we have to get
to know them so well that we can tell if there’s something
wrong with them.
We
train the hippos to move around, to put up with minor
veterinary procedures, to let us take care
of them. For instance,
we cut the hippos' tusks with them fully awake. Through
training, we get the animals to cooperate with us so
we don’t
have to immobilize them. That’s a lot less stressful
on the animals and on the keepers. We have to earn their
trust.
We
do minor veterinary care – right now, we’ve
been trying to figure out how to get the hippos to take
medicine. You’d think you could put medicine in
a pumpkin and throw it at them, but no matter how it’s
flavored or where it’s hidden, they just sense
the medicine and spit it out.
Introducing
our newest hippos was a big deal. We did
research, calling other zoos to find out what worked
so we didn’t
have to reinvent the wheel.
Part
of our job is going out and cutting browse (branches,
shrubs, etc) and
feeding it to the animals so they
have the opportunity to chew on leaves and branches.
We don’t
give the animals a lot of toys, but we try to provide
them with a healthy social structure and a comfortable
place to
live.
Besides all the above, we give a lot of tours to
people. Is
there anything gross about your job?
I guess some people would consider picking up poop to be
gross, but you get used to it quickly. I’d be
more grossed out by changing diapers.
Eyeball
things really gross me out. I’m going to attend
a presentation on eye surgery done on one of our monkeys
and there’s no way I’m going to be watching the
surgery part. I‘d rather pick up poop. Is
there anything about your job that might surprise people?
The training. Hippos are actually really smart – I
think they’re as smart as intelligent dogs, and they
understand commands – they’ll lie down and back
up on command. The birds are amazing, too. They’ve
been out of the aviary for months, but respond to signals
as if they’d never been gone
The
amount of thought that we have to put into every little
thing. For instance, with
the hippos, we have to decide which
animal to let out of the barn first. It takes years to
learn all the details about the animals, and I still
learn every
day. What
would you tell someone who wants to become a zookeeper?
Go for it. Study biology or zoology, something in the life
sciences. It is a very competitive field because there aren’t
that many zoos, so a lot of people start out by volunteering
or working at a smaller zoo. It’s not a career that’s
going to make you rich, but it has its own rewards.
What
other conservation work do you do, either inside or outside
the zoo?
AAZK (American Association of Zookeepers) is our professional
national organization that allows keepers to, among other
things, get involved in conservation projects. Right now
I’m serving on the national board of directors. One
of the projects that AAZK supports nationally is Bowling
for Rhinos, where zoos in the U.S. and Canada have bowlathons
to raise money for rhino conservation. I’ve organized
Bowling about 15 times, so I’ve coordinated the raising
of over $200,000. I’m pretty proud of that.
I’m
also involved with the International Conference on Zookeeping,
whose aim is to raise the standards of zookeeping
around the world, especially trying to help keepers in developing
countries learn about enrichment, training, diet, nutrition,
minor veterinary care, exhibit design – all the things
that we take for granted because we have so many more resources
here. I’m on the steering committee for this year’s
conference, which is in Australia. Our zoo is sponsoring
keepers from Colombia and India to attend the conference.
And WPZ is hosting the next conference here in Seattle in
2009.
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By Jackie Kiser |
