Animal ASMR

As a profession, zookeeping is very sensory... especially olfactory (but that's ok, because I like a lot of the smells!).  I'm a lot more ambivalent about the auditory side of the job.  Usually when I think of the sounds, it's the bad ones, by which I mean the loud ones and especially the piercing ones.  If the CIA ever finds themselves in a situation where they have a terrorism suspect that they need to reveal the location of a bomb before it goes off, I recommended strapping him down in a chair in a room full of very excitable, hand-raised former pet cockatoos.  Give him fifteen minutes, then I'm sure he'll talk.  

You may have to give him your questions in writing because his ear drums exploded, but he'll talk.

There are other sounds that make me much happier, either because they are just generally pleasant sounds (like the content chittering of small monkeys, or the singing of songbirds), or because you associate them with happy animals being happy to see you.  When I was a cat keeper, I remembered my overwhelming delight the first time that a tiger trotted over to chuff at me, before turning her back against the mesh for me to scratch.  Same with the bleating of goats and sheep in a petting barn, excited that you've finally come to feed them, or the happy pant-hoots of chimpanzees, which really is about the only sound a chimpanzee can make that doesn't make me want to run for the hills.

Other sounds are pleasant because they aren't what you were expecting.  Cheetahs, for instance, make a surprisingly bird-like chirp that always brightens my days.  Alligators are surprisingly vocal, from the squeaks that the babies make before they even hatch from their shells to the deep, rumbling bellows of the adult males, which literally make the water around their bodies spray up in miniature fountains.  Then, some small lizards can scream or chirp, but I'm still not sure how I feel about that.  

If there is a sound that I love most of all at the zoo, it's probably the soundtrack of being in one of the hoofed animal holding barns at the end of the day.  Might be zebra, or antelope, or giraffe, it doesn't matter.  The sound of a large animal busying itself with hay, burying its face as it feeds, its hooves gently stirring up the shavings on the ground, its tail whisking back and forth, idly swatting at stray flies, is all extremely relaxing to me.  It conveys the impressions of content, comfortable animals and the feeling of a day's work done, meaning that I can go home knowing that everything is done and all the animals are well.  I could go to sleep to that sound.  

On long, hot days, filling out my daily report at the desk in the barn, knowing that the timeclock and my car are still a far walk away, I almost have.