Squashing the Litterbug

OK, I admit it.  Watching an adult orangutan decide to pick up a pair of sunglasses and put them on is pretty funny.  It's especially funny in retrospect, after the glasses have been removed safely and you know that you're not going to be spending the next week sifting through fecal samples to see if you find shards of Raybans in them.  I'd have been just as happy if they'd never found their way in there, though.

Working with animals has made me a compulsive picker-upper of trash.  Part of it is for the benefit of the animals.  I grew up reading a series of horror stories in newspapers about zoo animals getting sick or dying from trash that they've ingested.  Sometimes it's trash that's blown into the exhibit by accident.  Sometimes it's more deliberate.  Any animal that lives in an pool is going to inevitably get a shower of coins from visitors who think that any body of water bigger than a sink basin is a wishing well.  Coins, however, contain metals such as copper, which can be toxic if consumed.  

Not all of the coins go into aquatic exhibits.  One cheeky little DeBrazza's monkey that I worked with was given a quarter, which it took half of hour of coaxing for me to get back from him.  He would wait until he was sure I was watching, then pull it out of his cheek pouches, make a big show of admiring it, then pop it back into his mouth and leap away from me.  It cost me a banana to get that back.  I kept the quarter once I got it from him.

Besides animal safety, I just hate litter for aesthetics.  The zoo is my workplace, and I'm very fond of it.  I hate seeing people use it as a dump.  Plus, the more trash people drop on the ground, the more it sends the message to other people that it's okay to drop trash.  Like begets like.  Litter invites litter.  On the other hand, people are less likely to litter there themselves.

It can be hard not to spend an entire morning picking up trash.  I start, and then I can't stop - and I seldom mean to get started.  Some days, my hands develop weird cramps from straining to hold so many pieces of litter as I try to grab "just one more" on my way to the trash can.

The zoo is a public place, and it'll never be completely clean (and that definition excludes the animal poop, which if you think about it is supposed to be there).  I try to do a little bit each day to make it cleaner.  I also sometimes make a point of picking up trash in front of visitors, just ducking down as I walk to pick up a stray wrapper or something.  I like to think that it reminds them that there are actual people who are on grounds trying to keep the place neat, both for the wellbeing of the animals and for their own experience.  

Reminding them of that just might make them a little more careful about getting their trash in the can.