While You Were Sleeping

Happy... National Napping Day?  Wait, that's a thing?  How did I get this far in life without someone telling me that?

I love working at the zoo.  I also love sleeping.  Lately, it's been getting to be a toss-up between the two.  However, since I am guaranteed 40 hours of work a week and explicitly promised 0 hours of sleep, I'm starting to show a little more fondness for the later.  To be honest, it's sometimes all I can do to not take a nap as soon as I get home... or right now.


Sometimes it spills over to work, and not just for me.  A few months ago, I walked in on one of our maintenance guys fast asleep behind some empty enclosures.  Well, "walked in on" implies that it was by chance.  In reality, I was lured in by the snoring.


You know who also loves naps?  A lot of our animals.  Some of them, like the big cats, are legendary nappers.  Others, like the sloths, don't exactly sleep all day, but they might as well for as little else as they do. 


Many visitors do not enjoy seeing sleeping animals.  They want to see action and excitement, swimming polar bears and swinging gibbons and hopping kangaroos and tortoises doing inappropriate things that parents will be too embarrassed to explain to their kids ("Yeah... piggy back rides... sure.").  An animal feeding is a sure hit.  An animal that is napping... less so.  Some people may even assume sleeping animals are only sleeping because they are bored or depressed or, with irritating insistence, that the animal is actually dead.


I almost never see wild animals sleeping in the wild.  In fact, most wild animals that I see are doing one of two things - looking at me or moving away from me, with varying degrees of haste.  They can usually hear or see or smell us coming long before we detect them, and are on their guard the moment we blunder into view.  They are not likely to relax easily, certainly less likely to actually fall asleep and leave themselves vulnerable.  How likely are you to fall asleep on a park bench or at a bus stop in a rough downtown neighborhood after dark?  You'd try to hold off until you were safe and secure in your home, if you have the option.


I like to think that a napping animal is a comfortable, content one.  So if you see a sleeping animal at the zoo, don't worry about it, and don't take it personally, as if they think you're too boring to stay awake in front of.  Consider it a compliment.