Sunday, May 5, 2013

Animal Keeper for a Weekend

Last weekend, just for two days, I had a "career switch" to something entirely different to what I usually do for a living.

And for those two days, if someone asked me to fill in a questionnaire to describe my job, I could have said:

"I work outdoors in a rainforest themed zoo looking after animals. We have no computers, no office cubicles or air conditioning. My colleagues are animal loving people who are very much down to earth. We dress in comfortable clothes and care not for fashion, heels, hairstyles, handbags, manicured fingernails or make up. We work hard and we enjoy getting dirtyWe care not for business etiquette, office politics or forced small talk. I hate to miss a day of work because the animals in our care wait for us, specially when it's time for food. And spending my days, watching them, being in their company and looking out for their well-being makes me happy."

My volunteer stint as a Docent at the zoo gave me an opportunity to go on an Animal Keeper attachment for two whole days. "Working hours" were from 9am to 5pm with two tea breaks and a lunch break in between. Basically, I had to follow the experienced Animal Keepers and make myself useful. Despite being new at the job, it only took a matter of minutes to fit right in to the work environment!

The team of Keepers I was assigned to looked after a tiny herd of pygmy hippos, kangaroos, wallabies, tree kangaroos, a cassowary, an emu, red-footed tortoises, dwarf caimans, blue tongued skinks, bearded dragons, a frilled lizard, a carpet python, saki monkeys, brown lemurs, red ruffed lemurs, gibbons, spider monkeys, a sail-finned lizard, freshwater rays and several species of freshwater fish. If you are wondering how that group of mostly unrelated animals came to the care of one team, it's merely the location of animal exhibits in relation to the keepers' quarters.

Boots - the most important part of the uniform. I never quite got used to them during the two days.

 
The rake - another useful tool for an Animal Keeper (not to bully the animals, but to keep their enclosures clean)

The apprentice follows the Keeper (secretly snapping photos) to get instructions on cleaning the Kangaroo enclosure

The chunk of responsibilities of a Keeper is food preparation and feeding, followed by cleaning the enclosures. I was really amazed to watch them prepare food for various types of animals. For most of these Keepers who have worked at the zoo for decades, what looked like complex recipes to me, were only second nature. And they moved really fast while doing it! Fruit/vegetable types, size/shapes of cut pieces, amounts/ratios for mixing fruits/ vegetables/ leaves/ nuts, additional food pellets, multivitamins/ medicines - it was all very complicated. No surprises, they didn't involve me in food preparation during rush hour, except for letting me wash up and peel off stickers from apples and oranges. Because if they did, many animals would have starved that day.

It also occurred to me that these animals that are well fed, well cared for and without natural predators probably enjoy a longer lifespan at the zoo compared to ones in the wild, if all the other conditions were right. The Head Keeper told me that they have to watch their diets carefully and not overfeed them because just like us, they can get obese and get a variety of chronic diseases. That might explain the board below, with recipes written down to the detail.

The Keepers don't have to look at it much anymore, but the special diets of all the animals including feeding times are pasted up for all to see

The animals in their care were mostly herbivores so there were plenty of fruits, leaves, yams, nuts and vegetables delivered to the headquarters each morning. The omnivores got bits of boiled eggs, worms and boiled meat as additional protein sources

I promised to keep an open mind before I decided to volunteer. The job wasn't all that exciting when it came to using live food as food for other animals. Or for that matter feeding mice - that were ultimately going to be food for the snakes - with fruits and vegetables. The Bearded Dragons and the Blue Tongued Skinks ate crickets and luckily, I was spared the job of scooping a handfuls of crickets from a glass box and throwing them in a ceramic pot with a tiny hole, for the crickets to escape one by one, only to be licked up by a reptile. However, I wasn't spared of closing the enclosure door after putting in the ceramic pot and the Bearded Dragon very nearly jumped out. I panicked but the Keeper told me not to worry and patted the Dragon on the back and I followed suit. For the first time in my life, I even helped  peel frozen prawns and removed their heads as part of the diet for the freshwater Rays.
 

 
(Left) It took a lot of will on my part to pick out thirty live giant worms for the token feeding session of the Saki monkeys. (Right) Mealworms for the fish.

The job of throwing in food for the Koi  (fish food pellets and bread) was fun

A big splash - competitive Koi and a few turtles in the same pond going for their food 

Brown lemurs feeding during the visitor interaction time. 

The Head Keeper joked that he calls the Brown lemurs the "Banana lemurs" because that's what they pick out first from their plates, much like fussy children. He let me hold the plates on both days during the visitor interaction session and feed them while a zoo staff gave an introduction of lemurs to the visitors present. I even got to hand out little cubes of fruit and have their tiny primate hands grab it from me. Several of the 100 species of lemurs living in Madagascar - the only natural homeland of lemurs - are endangered as a result of deforestation and fragmentation of forests for urban development. Tell me something else that isn't new. 

The Saki monkeys in addition to their main meals, received peanuts and worms as tokens during the visitor interaction sessions. On the first day, I was more than happy to hand out peanuts to them, but on the second day, I politely refused the instructions of the Keeper to hand out squirming worms to the same group of monkeys

I spent a good amount of time at the kangaroo and wallaby enclosure helping the Keepers to clean up and my token for that was to get to feed them and get really close. The kangaroos were rather tame and were loved by all the Keepers who even named them. Of all the wallabies, only two of them (Pinky and Sweetie, I think) that were hand-reared were bold enough to come close to humans. 

No doubt the most adorable of the lot - a group of Eastern Grey Kangaroos. There was Ricky, Stella, Jessie and a joey without a name, who I called Joey.

The wallabies weren't too comfortable getting close to us humans. 

I was instructed not to approach the kangaroos or pat them, especially the dominant male, when I was alone cleaning the shed. I understood that they were wild creatures that needed their space and fought the urge to pounce on Joey and hug him tight. They were rather curious and watched me as I pretended not to notice them while I raked leaves. Part of me was frightened of being attacked, despite their cuddly appearances. At one point, Stella (a smaller female) tried to probably play or wrestle gently with me and I desperately called out in muffled voices to the Keeper "Mr H, HELP! I'm about to be attacked.". But he never heard me or came to my aid and eventually Stella got bored and left. Maybe I overreacted a little.

Raking time at the kangaroo shed

When it rained, and it does a lot here, the kangaroos and wallabies have their meals in a sheltered area (Shu, you are giving too much blog space to the marsupials!)

Back at the Keepers' quarters, they were a chatty bunch. During tea break, we spoke of various things like travels, food, childhood and animals to cost of living and corrupt governments in other parts of the world. Spending time with the Keepers is a sure way to hear many touching animal stories of the zoo. All of them had worked there for over 10 years (one of them going on his 30th year!). Compared to high employee turnover in the corporate business world where remuneration was several times higher even, here were people content and happy with their responsibilities and the benefits that came with it. I think there is an important lesson there about doing things that drives you (rather than doing things that drive you towards boredom, depression and insanity).

In zoos, the Keepers don't refer to populations as "one male and five females and three unspecified". They simply say "1.5.3", where it is the ratio of male to female to gender unknown. One of the Keepers gave me a lesson in differentiating males from females. Now we may think it is pretty obvious, but in some species like Hippos and rats even, when the males are frightened or stressed (and in his exact words), "the balls may retract inwards making it hard to tell", so the best way to tell them apart is by the presence or absence of nipples, where the former would be a female. If anything, it made an amusing topic for conversation.

Inbreeding was a topic that popped up a lot. While the zoo has many captive breeding programs, they are careful enough to maintain genetic diversity and prevent too much inbreeding which, over many generations can lead to reduced fertility, abnormalities and reduced resistance to diseases among other things. On a day I was there, they planned to separate a young female Pygmy Hippo from the herd before older males (including the father) mated with her. The zoo is in a constant flux of having births and deaths. I also heard of a baby white rhino arrival. Hurrah! The rate of rhinoceros deaths by poachers far exceeds births, so every new life is a cause for celebration. While removing a dead fish, the Keeper chuckled as he told me that visitors usually panic upon seeing floating dead fish in the tank like it's an unnatural thing!

This Pygmy Hippo had to be separated from the herd because he could not get along with the father and is waiting to go on a zoo exchange program. It's a good thing zoos around the world keep in touch and exchange animals

The Red Ruffed Lemurs waiting to be fed

The zoo, known for nicely landscaped enclosures, has the gibbons roaming freely on a tiny island. They are afraid of water (hydrophobic) so it also works as a natural deterrent that marks the boundaries of their enclosure. The Keeper let me throw a tied up bunch of Kangkong leaves across the water to the gibbon pictured below and she actually caught it! It was a lucky throw because the second time, I got too excited (people were watching and the pressure mounted) and instead of going over the water in a good projectile to her hands, the bunch went vertically upwards and landed in the water. I swear she gave me a "Meh, you stupid ape" look.

A White Handed Gibbon - she's got really long hands. They are on the IUCN's endangered list.

Reptiles, compared to mammals, don't have to be fed too often because of their low metabolic rates and reduced energy requirements for regulating body temperature. The dwarf caimans didn't have to be fed at all while I was there. The Keeper told me that they seemed satisfied feeding on the fish in their pool. A trio of red-footed tortoises had to be fed. Since they were too slow to come to the feeding area, I was asked to find them and carry them to the central feeding area and place them next to the tray. They were spoilt, if you asked me. Oh, I finally got the answer to how tortoises mate! Given their physical structures, mating seems virtually impossible and tedious. When a Keeper showed me how to tell apart a male tortoise from a female one, the mystery was solved. The underside (plastron) of a female is flat, while in a male, it is curved inwards like a dome making it possible for the male to mount over her shell, without slipping off. 

On a joyous note, there was a batch of tortoise eggs laid exactly three months ago. It was carefully surrounded by a wire mesh to protect the eggs from monitor lizards, I was told. The Keeper in charge told me earlier in the day about this batch of of eggs that were slightly late to hatch. Although it could be normal because hatching may be delayed due to environmental factors, he told me we can have a careful look to rule out if the eggs were infertile or decomposed by now. He carefully loosened the soil to inspect the eggs and they looked perfectly round like table tennis balls and healthy. I suppose I'll have to follow up on this and the baby rhino the next time I visit.

A very hungry tortoise. They even get sprinkles of Calcium powder in their food for healthy bones.

 Through a fence - the impressive Cassowary, known to deliver painful kicks. The Keepers have a buddy system, where one Keeper entices it to one area of the enclosure and locks it up, while another Keeper cleans the other area.

They also lay impressive piles of poop which are very foul smelling

A tree kangaroo that could not be kept with her violent male partner in an open enclosure and therefore lived mostly in a cage. She looked incredibly sad. I couldn't tell if it was the natural facial expression of tree kangaroos to look sad like that, but she looked as if she was telling me painfully of the plight animal-kind faces as a result of dire consequences of human activities

When it was time to leave, a couple of Keepers asked me when I was coming again to help out. I had no idea, to be honest, with a full time 6-day job. Just to confirm, I asked if they didn't find an apprentice a bit of a burden, standing in their way and stepping on their shoes, etc, but I was assured that extra help was always welcome. I took it as a positive sign that I made a good apprentice! All in all, this was a great experience and I'm really thankful to all those who made it possible.


5 comments:

  1. Yes! Photos!!!! Definitely worth all the work to follow a keeper for two days I think! :D The zoo looks like it's doing a great job. And oh my good goodness, lemurs are adorable!
    Totally get what you mean about just wanting to cuddle the kangaroos. There are a few roos that roam around at home, and whenever I see them with joeys I want to sneak up and give them a pet... but I doubt they're as keen on the idea as I am... :3 In any case, they're always so flighty!
    Anyhow, it's obvious that you care about what you were doing, and that's awesome. \(^_^)/
    Thanks for sharing the pictures!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You have roos in your backyard? O_O That's really wild and pretty awesome!! :D What type of roos do you get there? I've only been lucky enough to see the grey ones up close.

    Since you mentioned lemurs, you might like this one (I find them highly amusing to look at):

    http://cdn.dogonews.com/system/ckeditor_assets/pictures/500314621860e04c990011db/content_lemurmadameberthemousemammalplanet.jpg

    Thanks for dropping by, Kate. Your cheery comments are always a highlight in the day! :D

    ReplyDelete
  3. Aaaaaaahhh!!!!! O.O As soon as I opened that link my eyes went as wide as the little guy's in the picture! Hahaha, they're enormous! He's the cutest thing ever!!
    And I grew up on a farm. :) So when I go home to visit the parents (which is quite often, because they feed me), I sometimes see roos in the paddock. Mostly they're wallabies to be honest, but sometimes I see grey ones. Every now and again we'll see dingos too! A lot of the pure-bred dingos are dying out though, which is a shame, so mostly they're crossed with dogs. Still, it's always fun to spot animals out and about, just doing their thing. And it's great that zoos have breeding programs and research projects to preserve species and help populations along. That makes me happy. :)
    And in a comment unrelated to this post but to the next... your dentists were going to reuse parts of your braces because they were expensive??? O.o Hahaha, oh the things you can learn when no one thinks you're listening!
    I've rambled enough. I don't go online very often, but when I do I make the most of it!! Apologies again for another rant! :D

    ReplyDelete
  4. It must have been a great experience growing up in a farm! I bet you were never bored :D

    Wow, I didn't know about dingos before. I read up more and it's quite sad to hear of the fate of the remaining pure-bred ones. Also couldn't help but notice how adorable their pups look.

    I love going home too... I get fed so well.

    And yes, they apparently recycle some of the Titanium wire parts :| I guess that's how they can provide subsidised services! Not a very comforting thought..

    Thanks for dropping by, your cheerful rants and rambles are more than welcome here!!! :D




    ReplyDelete
  5. I like this post,And I guess that they having fun to read this post,they shall take a good site to make a information,thanks for sharing it to me. hop over to this web-site

    ReplyDelete

Social Privilege

Not all of us are born to the same circumstances. There will always be differences in social status, which is determined by factors such as ...