I love this job, this profession, and this animal world that we belong to, but man... sometimes rotten news just piles up. Earlier this week a group of chimpanzees were shot and killed after escaping a Swedish zoo. Then, today, I learned that a keeper at the Jacksonville Zoo was injured after a bear escaped - the bear was shot and killed, the keeper hospitalized. Just now, I learned that Kucheza, the baby chimp from the Sedgwick County Zoo whose joyful reunion with his mother following a C-section birth, has died. This is following a few deaths at my own zoo, including an animal that I if not close to that at least pretty fond of. Bad news piling on bad news, loss upon loss.
Caring - be about people, places, or animals - can be pretty emotionally draining. It leaves you vulnerable and exposed, which may be why so many people don't opt for it. Days like today, I just think about devastated keepers and lost animals.
There's the flip side, however. When things go right - a baby born, an animal's quality of life improved, even a simple breakthrough in a relationship with an animal - everything feels magical and the world is beautiful. Those highs make up for the lows in the long run, or so I believe. On days like today, though, it can be a little hard to see it that way.
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