Take the Time to Talk

I was walking down the path in our zoo one day when I saw a visitor standing at the railing of our leopard exhibit.   I slowed down as I passed by to see what she was looking at.  It honestly hadn't occurred to me that it might actually be the leopard.

Our leopard, you see, is something of a ghost.  I'm not her keeper, nor do I go to her holding area often, so I can go weeks at a time without seeing her, no matter how many times I walk by.  Usually, when I do see her, it's as a shadowy figure half hidden in the the doorway of her holding area.  Not this day, though.  She was out and about, active, engaging with enrichment, and all around looking perfect and beautiful.  The visitor, who looked to be in her late teens, looked entranced.

Popping up next to her, I joked, "Well, I hope you feel honored.  Only about one guest in one hundred actually gets to see her at all, let alone like this."

The girl smiled and said she did feel honored... but also a little sad.  Ok, I think, I know where is going, but I pretended that I didn't and asked her why she was said.  She said that she was always a little sad seeing animals in zoos.  That it reminded her of a fish in a fishbowl.  She wished they could be free.

Fair enough.  Not an unreasonable opinion.

Fortunately, I had one of my 500 prepared elevator speeches ready.  I told her about how critically endangered Amur leopards are in the wild, and how close to extinction they are.  I told her about species which only exist in zoos, but which are being reintroduced into the wild.  And I told her about our regularly welfare assessments to evaluate their care, of the bonds that develop between keepers and animals, and about the constantly evolving standards that we hold ourselves to.

All in all, this took about five minutes.   It might have gone longer, but her father(?), already way down the path, was yelling down to her to hurry up, that they had to keep moving.  Even within those few minutes, though, I really felt like it was getting through and helping to dispel some of her concerns.  Not all of them, perhaps, which is valid - I never knew a really great keeper who didn't have at least occasional pangs of doubt or concern - but enough to encourage her to keep an open mind, which really is all that I can ask for.

It took five minutes.

We're all busy, and five minutes can really add up.  There's always something else that we can do with those five minutes.  For many of us, public engagement isn't part of our main job description.   It's not like there is a magic sign that tells you which visitors to engage with that will lead to some positive change and which might not be worth the time.  But, if you take the opportunity whenever you get a chance to talk with people, listen to them, and offer some honest insight into the world of animals, every once in a while you can walk away from that encounter - however brief it might be - and feel like you might have changed the way that they see the world.  Or at least, how they see one leopard.