Comments by "New Message" (@NewMessage) on "Casual Geographic"
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And while you are unlikely to be in any lion enclosures early on... Animals hold grudges. Especially the cute little ones.
A keeper had to take away a rock from a capuchin who went at his face every time he had the slightest chance for over 20 years after that.
I had a marmosets who hated me because his girl passed me the baby instead of him, and he made my life HELL for years.
Some will love everybody BUT you, for no reason at all. Don't set your heart on connecting with a wolf if you aren't ready and willing to forgo that to form that bond with a goat.
Seriously. Ppl like that we winnow out fast.
Prepare to 'take the bite'.
At some point, something will allllmost scoot past ya, and you'll grab it just in time, before it heads out and mauls a kid in a stroller. It's gonna bite ya. Hold it. Bring it back in the enclosure, even if you fear death. You are the fence now.
That's the job, too. You protect the animal, you protect the public.
This is not a joke. We can't usually get life insurance for a reason.
Worse.. you will have to deal with the public.
They don't read signs. Prepare about 5 answers for every enclosure you might be spotted in. It's all on the sign... but they won't even see it.
As a keeper, you'll probably only get a handful of those magic moments that would make a book worth reading, and maybe not for years, unless you get thrust in early due to a desperate situation... and most of those relationships will degrade when they grow up, have to be enclosed with the main pop., get transferred to another zoo, or become dangerous.
There's a story about a Lar Gibbon that I won't tell here. But it was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life, and it broke me in half. I'm not a keeper anymore.
Fun, hunh?
You get a few that break all the rules, though... and it does make it worth it, in the end.
If you are willing to decorate those beautiful moments with scars to follow your dream... then I wish you all the luck in the world, but doubt you'll need much. 'Cause that's really all it takes to be a keeper.
Hard work, dedication, and love so strong for those bitey l'll buggers that you accept the risks as given.
Pay's garbage, though.
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So, one day, the Zoo Director was weighed down with greasy, dirty meat dishes from the Cat area, and was taking his usual shortcut from behind the 'People Fence' to get to the lab.
Doing so meant he crossed directly in front of a 4 yr old Gibbon he'd helped hand raise, and had to skip over a tiny fence meant to keep folk off the flowers. She'd seen him do this hundreds of times, and never really cared much until one fateful day, when she happened to slam into the enclosure (after a particularly energetic little swing around the place), about 3 feet from his head, causing him to miss his little skip, and catch a foot on the rope. The clatter of metal dishes, the sight of knees and elbows flailing in all directions, combined with the ridiculously cartoonish noise he uttered was too much for her, and she fell right off her log to the ground along with him, in absolute stitches. Gibbons don't much like the ground, but she rolled around there a good 2 minutes. I could hardly keep standing myself.
From that day forward she waited for him. She'd get excited and jump up and down when she saw him loaded with morning diets, and would start swinging around to build up some inertia, so that when he came through she could slam the fence as hard as possible.
He never did it again, of course.. but for, oh.. at least 5 years, she did it every single day - weather permitting - and laughed, slapping and stomping the log she fell off of just from the stink-eye he gave her for it.
Gibbons are pretty great, 'lesser' or not.
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