When everyone is taking time off work…myself included. Since I’ll be working short weeks for the rest of the year I’m taking a little time off from blogging. Everyone is busy with the hustle and bustle of the holiday season so I’m sure you won’t miss me. Check back in at the beginning of the year to see what’s going on with Miss Tena here at your Zoo. So, from myself and all here at RWPZOO – Happy Holidays!!
Archive for December, 2007
It’s that time of year…
Shirley
WARNING FOR PARENTS WITH YOUNG KIDS: THIS ENTRY DEALS WITH DEATH OF ANIMAL
One of the inevitable facts of life is that everything that lives must die. That is true even here at the zoo. Veterinary care, lack of predator stress, and steady food means that most of the animals here live longer than they do in the wild. Take Shirley the opossum as an example. She lived 3 ½ years – which is quite a bit longer than the 18 months to two years opossums live in the wild. In people years she was about 140 years old! (kind of like dog years, only instead of each year being 7 human years each year is about 40 human years.) This week she passed away. Those days are the worst part of working here. Working day in and day out with these animals there is no way you cannot grow extremely attached to them. Shirley was one of my favorites. She was one of the first animals I trained. She didn’t catch on as quickly as her sister, Laverne, but I was so proud of her when she finally figured it out. And while it took her a little longer she became a rock star of programs using her new training. She spent many hours hanging out in my office. I would scatter her food around so she could spend her time like a wild opossum and scavenge around for it. As she got older she was less and less interested in exploring and more and more interested in sleeping. Still, she will be missed.
You know this day will come with every animal you work with. It doesn’t make it any less painful when it actually happens. With every animal that leaves us we are happy we are able to give them a dignified and humane end but saddened by the hole left in our day. Other animals will come into the area and the whole thing repeats. With every animal that leaves us those of us that worked with them ask ourselves the same things: did we do enough to make their lives as full and rich as we could? Did we make the best decisions for the animals every day? And you work every day to make sure that when that day comes you will be able to answer those questions with a resounding “Yes”.
The picture attached is Shirley in her heyday. She was the star of my enrichment program for Spooky Sundays a couple of years ago. This is her initial stare-down with her treat-filled jack-o’-lantern. In a few short minutes she had taken it completely apart – much to the delight of the audience.
I thought long and hard about writing such a depressing entry. But this is part of the job. It’s part of life in the Zoo.
How did you end up working at a zoo anyway?
This is another in the list of questions people always ask about my life here at the zoo. Everyone takes their own path to this line of work, but while mulling over what my entry was going to be about this week I realized I hadn’t properly introduced myself and how I came to be here. I began my career here as a docent (volunteer educator) back in 2002. Becoming a docent involves 13 weeks of classes in which you get an introduction to the zoo and the species found here and ecology and taxonomy and many other assorted topics. I was hooked immediately. Then came Loki.
Loki is a red-tailed hawk. I think he’s the most gorgeous hawk on the planet but it’s possible I am the tiniest bit biased. The third or fourth week of class our topic was birds. Part of the class was a live bird presentation and that was the first time I saw him. I was mesmerized. He was so majestic and regal and awe-inspiring. By the time he left the class I had a new goal in life. I wanted to be the person who had that trusting relationship with such an animal. I wanted to be the person who introduced other people to this incredible experience of being this close to such an animal. Between meeting Loki and getting to know the family of gibbons my fate was sealed by the end of docent training. Finally – a purpose in life. So I changed everything, went back to school, and started doing everything I needed to do to be able to fulfill that purpose.
Cut to 2005 when I started here full time. I finally started training to handle Loki. While I had worked with our screech owls, Loki was the first large raptor I had handled. With the patience of a saint (well, most of the time) he taught me what I needed to know about working with him and other raptors. After many stops and starts Loki and I have that trusting relationship I was working towards. We often walk the grounds of the zoo and I get to experience seeing the looks on the faces of people when they are first that close to such a majestic bird. I see the awe in the faces of students when I bring Loki to their classrooms. It’s the most wonderful feeling in the world. So, when people ask how I ended up working at a zoo I usually give them the really short answer: “Loki led me here.”
