Meeting the Animals

Ok, this is really about meeting the animals' poop. The other day on the tour, Will kept talking about "husbandry" as one of the zoo keepers jobs. Silly me, I thought husbandry had something to do with breeding. Husband, anyone? Nope, it's about cleaning up poop. Webster says husbandry is the control and management of domestic animals, but it really means the control and management of poop.

So, this is basically how the conversation went when I walked into the zoo keeper breakroom at 8:00 on Saturday morning...
"Oh, look, A volunteer to help us clean up!"
"So Lauren, what's your favorite animal?"
"I guess I'd say giraffe."
"Yeah, She's going to help us with the mammals!"
Now, I'm going to tell you the secret zoo keeper language. You add the word "poop" to the end of every sentence. Go ahead, reread the conversation in the secret language. That's what the zoo keepers were thinking. yikes!

So, I was assigned to help Denise. She's in charge of the giraffes, zebras, ostriches, and other various small animals poop. But first we have to feed the animals. It's an important part of the cycle. If the animals were outside, we cleaned their holding pen, set up their food, locked them in the holding pen, then cleaned the exhibit. If the animals were inside (the giraffes have a very nice heated barn that they sleep in!) then we fed them, locked them in, cleaned the exhibit, let them out, locked them out, then cleaned their holding pen. And that took the four hours. Whew.

But the zoo keepers do all that every day! By the time we were through with each area, it was cleaner than the floor in my house! These people are serious about taking good care of these animals. When I wanted to skip a few little balls of giraffe poop, Denise went back and got them. Giraffe poop looks just like deer poop except scattered, not in little piles. I wish it were in piles. Not only did we pick up poop, we raked, hosed down, and disinfected! These are big animals that live in big areas. It was crazy.

About half-way through the poop cleaning cycle, we got back in the truck and drove over to Kate's mammals - the elephant/lion compound. Zoo keepers are nice, they help each other. The elephants were inside so we helped Kate clean up the outside exhibit. Each of the three of us had a big garbage can (big blue one with handles) and a really big shovel (bigger than any shovel I'd ever used). We shoveled up elephant poop all over the exhibit. Man, it was heavy! But, surprisingly, it didn't smell very bad. I guess they only eat hay and fruit, so it's like a hay smoothie. :-) It was a little gross, but mostly just heavy. There really is an art to shoveling that stuff. I mean, the keepers obviously had more practice than me. So, we each filled up our trash can. It was too heavy for me to drag back to the truck, they helped.

Then we went into the elephant holding area for a little training session with the elephants. This was fun (as long as you stand behind the yellow line so they can't grab you with their trunk). The keepers gave commands like "kneel down," "crawl," "turn around," "pick up your trunk," and the elephants did all that! They could even get on their knees and crawl backwards! Yeah! I was having fun.

Then the elephants went out into the exhibit and the keepers brought in three more trash cans. What? Now that the elephants were gone, I noticed the massive piles of poop in the corners and the expanse of pee that soaked and surrounded them. yikes. Outside the pee had just soaked into the ground, but not on this concrete floor. I could just imagine the pee soaking up the legs of my jeans. What if I slipped and fell!? Deep breath, I'm not a wimp. The keepers jumped right in there. I went for the pile with the most shallow pool of pee. But it was awful. The ammonia smell was bad. I got a shovel-full in my bucket, and another one. When I dug my giant shovel in a third time I uncovered a giant, solid piece of poop about the size of my 10-gallon fish aquarium (more or less a gallon). I tried to pick it up, but I gagged and felt hot and dizzy (the smell of the pee was so bad! and I was standing in it, shoveling giant poop!). So I told the keepers that I was going to wait outside before I threw-up. yikes.

So I sat on the back of the truck and listened while the two keepers stayed in there and talked about their families and the holidays while they scooped elephant poop. Every now and then they would drag out a full garbage can that left a trail of pee. yuck. whew. Kate ended up with SIX garbage cans full of elephant poop! SIX A DAY! So, I hope you're happy that our zoo has elephants.