The Screaming Forest

The trees are screaming outside my window as I write this.  It's not too bad, really - it actually fades into a kind of calming white noise after a little while.  Ok, so it's not the trees themselves that are making all of the ruckus.  It's what's in them, and I don't mean the leaves.  This is the year of Brood X, the largest concentration of the periodical cicada, making its emergence as it does every 17 years.  And boy do they make their presences known.

Cicadas are remarkably long-lived insects, but you wouldn't really notice because they spend almost all of their lives underground in their larval stage.  A few weeks ago, they clambered up to the surface, shed, and emerged as their winged adult form.  If you aren't a bug person, they can be a bit daunting, with their large size, blackish-green bodies, and bulbous red eyes.  They crawl all over the place, leaving the empty remnants of their exoskeletons behind them, and they tend to fly (poorly) all around us, which leads to some collisions.  I personally love seeing them, but I also know a lot of people who are repulsed by them.

You know who does love to see these guys?  All of the animals - both zoo and wild.  This is a sudden all-you-can-eat buffet of little winged beasties for a host of native wildlife, from copperheads to chipmunks (who, in turn, are also probably glad that the snakes have something else to eat this time of year instead of them).  I'm pretty sure I saw a mockingbird perched on a branch yesterday with its stuffed belly scraping the bark.  It looked like I feel after Thanksgiving dinner - a curious mixture of pleasure and self-loathing.

Our zoo animals love cicadas too.  Storks and cranes snap them up, smaller birds pursue any that are unwise enough to enter aviaries, foxes and meerkats pounce of them.  Reptile keepers gather them up to bring inside as a seasonal treat for herps.  For a short time only, it's cicadas for all.  I have one coworker who complained that taking her dog for a walk has become a nightmare chore - it takes a half hour to go to the end of the block and back, because the dog has to stop and eat every single cicada they meet on their way.  Even some people snack on them.

And soon, just like that, they'll be gone again, vanished for another generation.  I know I'll get used to it, but for a day or so afterwards, I know I'm going to be startled by just how silent the trees have all become.

Close Enough to Touch

My favorite experiences at zoos - working and visiting - are often behind the scenes, when I get to be in the closest of proximity to the animals.  There, I hear their quietest of noises, catch their smells, see the tiniest of details in the patterning, and, in certain conditions, touch them.  Every animal is experienced so much differently at close quarters.   Of course, not everyone gets access to these areas, and if you are back there, either as an employee or as an invited guest, there is an expectation that you will know how to conduct yourself.

Read: there is an expectation that you won't do anything disastrously stupid.

When I read about the spider monkey incident in El Paso, some of the articles stated that the zoo was now looking to make changes to the exhibit to reduce the possibility of future idiotic incursions.  That, inevitably, means more barriers.  I totally understand why they need to for liability reasons.  It just makes me sad.  Every time that a visitor does something malicious or stupid that puts themselves or an animal n danger, that's just about the only thing that the zoo can do.  Short of having attendants spaced at every exhibit to watch people, they can only put up more barriers.

More barriers mean more separation from the animals.  More separation means less connection.  The more people do stupid things, the less of a chance that visitors can have to have really great, meaningful memories of the animals.  We end up having to appeal to lowest common denominators of behavior, which means that visitors are deprived of what could be some great, up-close encounters.

When I was young, my parents took me a zoo in Europe.  I was probably too young to really appreciate the significance of the castles and artwork and other historic sites, but I was certainly old enough to appreciate the zoo, and the hippo exhibit in particular.  The hippo swam up to a low wall just feet from us, close enough that even my short little arms could reach, and yawned.  It was a moment that memorized me - if I'd leaned a little forward, I could have tumbled into its mouth, which was almost at eye level with me.  Of course, I was also close enough that, if I'd wanted to, I could have gotten in and been injured, or thrown a rock down its throat, or done a dozen or so other unpleasant things.   That exhibit's been remodeled since then - safer, but more distant.

The Mobile Giraffe Feeder

The Internet, in all of its constant quest for wholesome content, is making this out to be a friendly giraffe helping a gazelle in distress by plucking off a branch that's stuck in its horns.  I doubt that the gazelle is in that much distress - I once worked with a Speke's gazelle who would frequently trot around with an entire flake of hay impaled on his horns.  As for altruism, I suspect that the giraffe was viewing this as a somewhat novel but ultimately satisfactory feeding experience.  If you were to strap browse to a Roomba and let it loose in the exhibit, you'd probable get the same reaction.

Standing Up For Spider Monkeys

 

For some reason, in spite of several decades' worth of evidence to the contrary, a small handful of stupid people seem to think that it's a good idea to climb into exhibits with zoo animals and try to make friends.  Our latest fence-hopping bonehead comes to us via the El Paso Zoo in Texas, where she waded into the spider monkey exhibit to dispense some Cheetos, presumably for social media clout.  She wanted attention.  Well, she got it.

The woman was identified in short order as an employee of a local law firm, and her transgression was brought to their attention.  She was subsequently fired.  She did, to be fair, almost immediately find a job with a rival law firm, which has seemingly being trying to milk this for attention by ranting and raving to anyone who will listen about how unjust this whole thing was, but most people seem to be brushing them off as just being rather stupid (seriously, go to Lovett Law's Facebook page and read the comments.  They're a hoot).  More so than the firing, the young woman in question is also looking at some criminal charges, as El Paso Zoo is taking legal action against her.  I'm glad to see that zoos and aquariums are increasingly willing to hit back at people who, through their own stupidity, put the lives and health of zoo animals in jeopardy.  Enough is enough.

Birds of a Feather

I completely, 100% guarantee you, if you polled a thousand visitors about to go into a Bird House what bird they were most excited to see, not a single one would mention the Taveta golden weaver - or any weaver, for that matter.  I also guarantee you that, if you were to observe those visitors as they made their way through the building, that's the species that most of them would spend the longest watching.

People don't just go to the zoo to see animals.  They go to see animals doing something - monkeys swinging, seals swimming, bears wrestling.  Most birds, of course, can fly - but they do it for a reason, not for the fun of it.  A bird in an exhibit isn't going to fly endless loops around its aviary.  That's exhausting, energy-intensive, and, in the wild at least, a good way to drain yourself out and die.  As a result, many birds spend a lot of their time perching and preening, shaking it up a little now and then by preening and perching.  And occasionally pooping.  You can watch a harpy eagle (in the wild or in the zoo) for a considerable amount of time and get nothing for your trouble but a haughty glare.

When you see a harpy eagle in a zoo, however, you generally only see one, or a pair, unless there is an eaglet in the nest.  The same is true for whooping cranes, or southern ground hornbills, or cassowary, or a lot of other very impressive birds.  Weaverbirds may lack imposing gravitas, but when you get a lot of them and put them together, you can always count of their being some action.  Nests need to be built and maintained constantly.  Courtship is carried out.  Some birds will feed, while others will vigilantly scan the horizon for danger.  Minor feuds break out.  Songs are being sung (if you can call that a song).  Weavers may be tiny - but they're never boring.

The best exhibit birds, in many opinion, are the colonial ones, in which large numbers of a species can be housed together.  This includes not only small fry like the weavers, but some of the most popular of zoo birds, such as flamingos, penguins, and puffins.  Having lots of birds together not only guarantees action and excitement and cool behavior, but it also can do wonders for breeding programs.  An exhibit space which can accommodate a single pair of cranes can house two dozen flamingos.  With these species that love living cheek-to-beak, it only takes a few zoos to maintain a sustainable population of a species.

Of course, this only works for some species.  Some birds, such as swans and cranes, can be very sociable at some times of the year, and savagely territorial during others.  These are birds that can't be maintained in large flocks in zoos, because if you tried, there almost certainly will be blood.  Which is a pity - I've seen large flocks of both in the wild during migrations, and they really are magnificent to see.  It's just too bad that they dynamic wouldn't last.

Weavers will never be rock-star animals that the public comes out to droves to see, but I like to think that they are an animal that, once people discover, they're going to become entranced by.   Great things can come in tiny packages, and little birds can have outsized-behaviors.

Species Fact Profile: Taveta Golden Weaver (Ploceus castaneiceps)

                                                             Taveta Golden Weaver

Ploceus castaneiceps (Sharpe, 1890)

Range: East Africa (Kenya and Tanzania)

Habitat: Savannah, Open Woodland, Wetland

Diet: Seeds, Grasses, Grains, Insects

Social Grouping:  Large Colonies

Reproduction:  Polygynous.  Males build elaborate nests (usually over water), woven from reeds and grasses.  Females select males based on the construction of the nest.  Lay 2-3 dark green, glossy eggs, incubate for two weeks.  Fledge at two weeks of age

Lifespan: 20 Years

      Conservation Status: IUCN Least Concern

•       Males are golden in color, brighter on the breast and duller on the back, with a greenish tint on the wings and tail and some reddish-orange coloration on the face.  The beak is black.  Females are an olive green color with pale streaks
•       Measure about 10 centimeters in length, weigh 18-24 grams
•       Gather in large colonies, most likely to help monitor for predators.  Several birds may build their nests in the same tree in close proximity to each other.  Sometimes, multiple birds may work together to build a single large, elaborate nest with multiple chambers
•       Members of the songbird family, though their vocalizations are not considered pleasing to human ears and are often described as "harsh" and "tuneless"

      Zookeeper's Journal: Weaverbirds (of which the Taveta is one of the most commonly encountered species in zoos) may be small, but they are endlessly fascinating as exhibit birds.  Highly social animals always provide a lot of opportunities for guests to observe interesting behavior - with multiple animals in an exhibit, there's almost always a good chance that one the birds is doing something interesting.  In the case of this species, what that "something" is is probably weaving.  Even in the safety of a zoo exhibit, where snakes and other predators are less likely to be able to access eggs and young, weaverbirds will continue to construct their elaborate hanging nests, woven from strips of grass, or whatever materials the exhibit and the keepers provide.  Recently, I was able to watch several birds in an aviary working on their nests, all of which were at various stages of construction.  Some were basically complete, while some were simply a few braids of grass on a branch, seemingly insubstantial.  It was fascinating to watch the birds eagerly working away, mindful of the attentions of their female flockmates.  Besides the cool behavior that goes into them, weaver nests are one of the details that I remember the best from time spent in East Africa - seeming the trees festooned with them was a reminder of where I really was, as opposed to some fancy zoo exhibit.  Not surprisingly, some zoos use artificial weaver nests as decorations for their exhibits to help evoke the ambiance of the savannah.

When the Hippo Hits the Fan

It's a cute cartoon, playing on the classic joke about (humans) peeing in pools - but I don't think it works to well with hippos.  Hippos are anything but shy when it comes to their excretory events - especially those concerning solids.  Far from being a stealthy motion, hippo bowel movements are quite... explosive.

When a hippo defecates, it does so while whirring its tiny tail in the onslaught of oncoming poop like a little motor.  There are little hairs on the tail that are shaped in just such a way as to help spread the manure as a spray in all directions.  This the hippo then uses to mark its territory.   I can see why it works.  I certainly want their territory after it's been covered in all of that.

And you thought it was dangerous being in front of a hippo.

The Zoo Hypothesis

 "Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

- Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes (November 8, 1989)

If you played the Sporcle quiz featuring depictions of zoos in TV shows, you may have noticed that a few of them depicted zoos with a twist - ones in which we were the animals.  Throughout human history, there have been occasions on which humans have been put on display for other humans, from the menagerie of Montezuma in the Aztec capital to the traveling ethnic exhibitions at the turn of the last century, organized by Carl Hagenbeck.  Then, years ago someone stepped back and asked the weird question of, what if all of us - as in, the entire planet - are actually part of one giant zoo exhibit?

The Zoo Hypothesis, as it is called, is a popular device in science fiction.  It maintains that advanced aliens are watching us, perhaps studying us, as we might study animals in a zoo.  Unlike the animals in the zoo, however, we are unaware of their presence.  Which is just as well, I suppose.  I'd hate to think of what the Martian equivalent of banging on the glass or throwing rocks might be.  An alternative twist on the theory is that we aren't zoo animals, we're laboratory animals, and that said aliens are experimenting on us through subtle manipulation.  That's... less comforting.

So remember, if you ever feel like you're being watched or are never alone, this might be the explanation.  Or you might just be paranoid.  Maybe the zoo animals have it better.  At least they meet their keepers, and they know when someone is on the other side of the glass.

Sporcle Quiz: TV at the Zoo

TV at the Zoo

This isn't one of my quizzes, but I really enjoyed it.  Almost (but not quite) as fascinating as the animals at the zoo is the zoo (or aquarium) as an institution itself - the history, the facilities, the people who work there and visit there, and how it fits into society.  Every time that I see a zoo shown in a TV show, movie, or book, it offers a little insight as to how the author or producer sees the place - a conservation facility, a family-friendly wonderland, a prison?  Or, most often in fiction, a place that solely exists within the story so that an animal can be allowed to escape (or visitor can fall into the enclosure) to add drama to the plot.  Enjoy the quiz - I sure did (even if I didn't recognize them all).

Six Degrees of Separation

I have no idea if people still play this, but for a while there was a game that movie-lovers enjoyed called Six Degrees of Separation.  The idea was that every actor and actress in Hollywood could, with only six links, be connected to Kevin Bacon.  Actor A stared in a movie with Actress B, who was in another movie with Actress C, who was in a third movie with Actor D, who appeared in a movie with Bacon, or something like that.

Without too much trouble, I could probably make a zoo equivalent.  Actually, I could probably make two zoo equivalents - one for keepers and one for animals.  

The zookeeper community is far flung, but there tends to be a lot of movement within it.  Job openings can be few and far between, especially if you have a somewhat specialized position.  Also, if you want to move up the ranks, it often requires you to take a leap of faith and go for a job at a different zoo.  Once there, you will meet other keepers, some of them certain to leave and take jobs somewhere else.  One of the advantages is that, wherever you go in the country, you're bound to know someone.  It's always fun to chat with a friend at another zoo, realize we share an acquaintance, and then piece back together how we both now that person.

Likewise with the animals.  You may get a male in from one zoo and a female in from another.  They breed and have offspring, some of which may go on to other zoos upon reaching maturity.  Often, I've been at a conference of workshop when someone mentions an animal at their zoo by name, only for a keeper at another zoo to overhear them and light up.  "Oh, [animal's name]!  I know him, he was born at my zoo!"

Of course, all of these animal exchanges also build ties between keepers and different facilities, adding more strands to the web.  Many of the people that I've met at other facilties I've met through transactions, or while checking up on animals that I used to care for.

So forget Kevin Bacon - at this point I might only need three or four degrees of separation of be connected to most of the zoo folks - and animals - in the country.  And the great thing is, every year I get to throw out a few new strands of the web.

Red Wolf Rebound

Over the years, I've always kept one eye focused dimly on the far eastern counties of North Carolina.  Here, in the swamps, woodlands, and meadows around Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, the world's last wild red wolves made their last stand.  The wolf population was the result of a captive breeding and reintroduction program established between zoos and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.  Over decades, it had boosted this species from "Extinct in the Wild" to a small population of over 100 animals.  Then, faced with a resurgence of persecution from humans, it dropped back down to less than 10.

When I visited Alligator River a few years back, I felt ambivalent about the experience.  It was very meaningful to be at the site of such an important, historic zoo conservation program's crowning achievement.  And yet, it seemed quiet, empty, the landscape felt incomplete.  I was getting ready to write the wolves of North Carolina off as a lost cause.    I think a lot of people were.  It looks like their story isn't over yet, though.  Red wolves may be down, but they aren't out.  Not yet.

Photo Credit: Akron Zoo

This month, a female red wolf at the Akron Zoo gave birth to a liter of eight pups.  Four have been left with her to rear.  Four were hurried off to North Carolina and were placed in a wild wolf den, to be raised as wild wolves.  This release was supplemented by the additional release of four adult wild wolves.  These moves represent the first reintroduction of wild wolves to the population since 2014 - basically for as long as I've been writing this blog.

There are a lot of factors which probably influenced this reversal.  Lawsuits which held USFWS' feet to the fire for not actively protecting the animals on the ground and allowing the population to wink out.  Zoo breeding programs for not giving up on the species.  Local educators who have been tireless in trying to reverse negative opinions about the wolves.  Oh, and a change of leadership at the federal level didn't hurt either.  

I still feel very strongly that, for this species to survive, additional wild populations need to be established elsewhere throughout their former range.  Red wolf numbers are still way down from where they should be, but they've been down before.  Given a chance and a little breathing space, even the most endangered of species can often surprise us with their resilience.  

From the News: Chinese zoo concealed escaped leopards for two weeks

Chinese zoo concealed escaped leopards blunder for two weeks

No big cat scares me more than leopards.  They are fast, agile, daring, and very clever, to say nothing of stealthy.  I've spent several minutes staring right at one, in the zoo and in the wild, before I finally realized what I was looking at.  A leopard could hide under a fallen leaf if it had nothing better to use.  The thought of a leopard loose in my (somewhat forested) zoo would terrify me.  The thought of more than one leopard on the loose would keep me up for days.

I can understanding not wanting your visitors to panic, but seriously - there's got to be a happy medium between full blown mayhem and... whatever this is.

Run, Rhino, Run

 

I can't say Reddit is all bad... I was able to find a treasure trove of videos of rhinos with the zoomies, so that's always nice.

Eaters of the Dead

Every once in a while, I'll see some version of the same article floating around on social media.  Most recently, it was from Reddit.  The article purports to have the "inside dirt" on what working at a zoo is like, filled in with gossip from people who may or may not have ever been keepers.  It's always with a slight cringe that I check on these.

Sometimes, I'm pleasantly surprised to find that, beneath a click-bait title, there is actually a well-written article from vetted sources that actually does have useful, true information.  These articles can actually help disseminate popular misconceptions about what goes on behind-the-scenes at the zoo.  To get people to read it, you usually have to put up a title that makes them think they're getting some secret gossip, but apart from that they are good articles.  Other times, it's a poorly-written mishmash of stories that all begin with "I used to date this guy who's brother used to work at the zoo, and he told me..."

Skimming through the latest version, I saw the usually mix of things that are either a) not really secrets, b) a bit out of context, or c) not correct.  Of the later, one stood out to me which I wanted to correct.

In all of my years at American zoos, I have very rarely seen zoo animals fed to other animals.  In my years working at AZA accredited zoos, this has happened almost zero times that I have seen, the exception being Madagascar hissing cockroaches culled from a colony and fed as treats to other animals.  In my non-AZA days, the zoo bred rabbits and chickens, some of which may have found their way to pythons or servals, and a deer or goat that died and seemed healthy enough may have become tiger meat.  But for the most part, and especially at accredited zoos, no one is hacking up zebras for lion chow.

There are two reasons for this.  One, most of our animals are under medical management. often pretty intense, towards the end of their lives, and their systems are usually full of all sorts of medications that are there to help them feel more comfortable and healthy.  Those meds are not something necessarily that you want to pass up the zoo food chain.  Secondly, even if an otherwise healthy animal dies a sudden, completely explicable death - let's say it happens to break its neck - the vets are still going to do a necropsy to figure out if there is anything that they missed of importance with potential health implications for the other animals.  The recently deceased animal is seen as a learning opportunity, not as a chance to shave a few bucks off the grocery bill.

I do totally support carcass feeding for carnivores as a method of enrichment, but with animals that are bred for the purpose and that we know are healthy and safe.  And yes, I know that in some countries collection animals are fed out (Marius the Copenhagen giraffe gets brought up... a lot).  But I want to let my US readers know, this isn't really how things work at, say, the San Diego Zoo or the Bronx Zoo.  Otherwise, most zoos would have a lot more vultures on display.

Nature's Non-Existent Rulebook

 "Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno"

For over a millennium, that saying, Latin for "no rarer bird on earth than a black swan," was commonly used in Europe to denote something that was impossible  Just like we might say "when pigs fly" to indicate something that will never happen, so did Europeans up until the 1600's use the black swan to indicate that something couldn't possibly exist.  All of that changed, of course, when Europeans first arrived in Australia and found that the swans there were, improbably, black.

A teacher told me once that Nature never read a textbook, and that there are no rules.  He was exaggerating, slightly - there are some rules.  No animal can photosynthesize or live off air.  No mammal can breathe underwater.  There are plenty of others we could probably come up with... but in so many cases, what we think we now about animals is offset by glaring exceptions.

There is there is the giant panda - a bear that lives off of grass - and the Gray's monitor lizard, a member of the same family of hypercarnivore lizards that spawned the Komodo dragon, but one that feeds on fruit.  Some mammals, such as the echidna, lay eggs, while some reptiles give livebirth... or give birth without a male present at all.  There are pythons which feed on prey that seems much too large for them, giant whales which feed on the tiniest of creatures, and vampire bats, leeches, and other species which feed on blood.  Speaking of bats, the very fact that there are mammals that fly is bizarre, offset by the fact that there are birds that can't.  Seals live in freshwater lakes far removed from the ocean and penguins swim on the equator.  Some species which we expect to be small develop into giants, like the Japanese giant salamander.  Some that we expect to be giants develop miniature forms.

It used to be that the one, unarguable rule in nature was that no animal used tools, apart from man.  Jane Goodall threw that one out the window with her work on chimpanzees.  Since then, we've seen tool usage in a host of other species, from mongooses to vultures, including relatively "primitive" species such as crocodilians.  Language and altruism were also considered the private properties of humans - but those are awkwardly showing up as the domains of other species as well in varying degrees.

When visitors come to the zoo, I love to show them the animal oddities, the ones that, according to the "rules," shouldn't exist, or at least shouldn't behave the way that they do.  They serve as a living reminder that so much that we thought we knew about the natural world is wrong, and we have so much more to learn.  500 years ago, everyone in Europe knew that there was no such thing as a black swan.  It makes you wonder what else we know is wrong, too.

Species Fact Profile: Blue Penguin (Eudyptula minor)

                                                      Little (Blue, Fairy) Penguin

Eudyptula minor (J. R. Forster, 1781)

Range: Coastal Southern Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand

Habitat: Coastal Habitats

Diet: Small Fish, Small Mollusks, Small Crustaceans

Social Grouping:  Loose Colonies

Reproduction:  Monogamous (may be for life).  Breed June through October in loose colonies.  Nest in burrows in the ground or in caves.  Lay 1-2 smooth white eggs, incubated for 31-40 days.  Chicks fledge at 50-65 days.  Females mature at 2 years, males at 3

Lifespan: Up to 25 Years

      Conservation Status: IUCN Least Concern

• Smallest penguin species in the world, standing an average of 30 centimeters tall and weighing 1.1 -1.2 kilograms.  Flipper length average of 11-12 centimeters.  Bill 3.4-3.5 centimeters long, 1.4-1.5 centimeters deep (males have slightly larger bills than females, juvenile bills are thinner and shorter than adults)
• Sexes look alike.  Top of the head, neck, and dorsal surface are indigo-blue.  Ventral surface, chin, and throat are white.  Contrast between light and dark areas not as well-defined as in other penguin species.  The color gets duller with age, with whites turning grey.  Bill is black.  Eyes vary from silver to blue to hazel.  Juvenile color is a brighter blue than the adults
• Most nocturnal of the penguins, but still do much of their feeding at day, returning to the nest at dusk.  Swim as far as 710 kilometers, usually staying 20 kilometers from shore.  Can dive to depths of over 60 meters, but usually remain with 5 meters of surface
• Gulls, snakes, skinks, and monitor lizards will eat eggs and nestlings.  Terrestrial predators are mostly introduced species – dogs, cats, rats, foxes, and weasels – as well as eagles.   At sea, they may be preyed upon by barracuda, sharks, seals, and orcas
• Parents guard the chick for the next 2-5 weeks, taking turns staying with it for 3-4 days at a time while the other goes off to feed (chicks have poor thermoregulatory ability, need to be fed very often).  
• Possible causes of decline are introduced predators, pollution (oil spills, plastics), loss of prey base due to overfishing, and disturbance of breeding habitat through development, erosion.  Most secure colonies are those on offshore islands, which are safe from introduced predators.  Past reports of unexplained mass mortality events – in 1940, a Phillip Island colony dropped from 2000 birds to 20 for unknown reasons, possibly pathogenic
• Historically penguins and their eggs were used as a food source by indigenous peoples and settlers, also hunted for skins.  Sometimes killed as bycatch in fishing nets, hit by cars

My Work Wife's Towel

Tutu was pretty.  I knew that.  Everyone who worked with her knew that.  She was also smart as a whip, had a wicked sense of humor, and could whistle perfectly melodious tunes all day long.  Of course, out of all of my coworkers, I was the only one who was ever in a position to really appreciate any of these.  That's because I'm the only one who's face Tutu wasn't always trying to rip off.

Tutu was a Molucca, or salmon-crested, cockatoo, a largish, handsome parrot from Indonesia with the sort of coloration you'd get if you tossed a bright red garment into the wash with all of your whites and let it bleed out onto them.   She was a former pet, surrendered to our zoo by an owner who couldn't handle her high-maintenance self, which would have been a great thing for them to have realized before they bought her.  Like many former pet parrots, Tutu had poor socialization skills, was easily bored, was highly destructive, and could scream for hours if she didn't get her way.  Unlike most former pet parrots that I worked with, Tutu liked me.  A lot.  I'm pretty sure that from the moment that she first laid eyes on me, she was already starting to pick out names for our future kids.

The keepers called her my "work wife."  They stopped laughing the first time that nutcracker of a beak snapped shut inches from their nose.  The problem was that Tutu's love for me came at the expense of everyone else.  She loathed every single other person that we worked with, and if she saw a female colleague get to close to me, her rage was uncontrollable (though she never seemed angry at me for this perceived infidelity).  At best, she was grudgingly cooperative with the other staff, sometimes letting them tend to her unmolested, sometimes not.

This was especially unpleasant because Tutu had to be carried back and forth each day in the spring and fall between her unheated outdoor enclosure and her indoor holding.  I remember watching keepers carrying her outside with their arms stretched as far away from their faces as possible; they wore the kind of expression you'd expect to see on the face of a soldier who was carrying a live grenade with the pin pulled out.  As a result, most days I had to be the one to ferry her around, which meant that I often had to plan my days around Tutu.  I was always living in fear that the day would come when I'd be off, home and relaxing, when I'd get a panicked call from work, saying that Tutu had darted up a tree, or was lunging at anyone who came close and couldn't be carried in, so would I please come and get my stupid bird?

The one job that I would not do, it was decided, was trim Tutu's beak and claws, both which had a tendency to get overgrown.  Tutu was smart but she was resistant to training and she never allowed me to trim them voluntarily.  We wanted to make sure she was still on good terms with someone, so I was excused from what, to her, was a very stressful job.  Actually, I did have a role in the process.  The keepers would grab Tutu up, wrap her in a towel, and then do the trimming.  Once they were done, I would swoop in and take Tutu home... and then, in a ridiculously overblown style, I would beat the towel and scold it for harming Tutu.  That always seemed to take the edge off of her feelings, seeing her arch-rival and tormentor being punished for its sins.

If I'd been in charge and planning from the beginning, I don't think I would have indulged Tutu so much.  I would have socialized with her and played with her still, sure, but I would have made more of an effort to rotate other keepers to her instead of doing what was easier and surrendering to her whims.  Everyone needed to learn to work with Tutu, and Tutu needed to learn to work with everyone.  Eventually, she did start to settle and become more tractable with other keepers.  A week could pass at a time without my needing to do anything with her.  That's just as well, because eventually, I did leave to take a job at a different zoo.

Before I drove away on that last day, I made one slow, careful inspection of my car.  I needed to make sure that none of my coworkers had slipped a pink, feathery passenger into the backseat as a goodbye gift.

That's Enough Internet Today...

 

Weirdest part?  The zoo that she left this comment for... only has female elephants.  So, maybe she isn't the best person to be explaining this to her child anyway.

Through the Eyes of a Penguin

One of the last American facilities to reopen after the pandemic is the Monterey Bay Aquarium, but their day is, at last, coming soon.  To help reintroduce the popular attraction to visitors, Aquarium staff are giving a sneak-peek of the facility through the eyes of a penguin tour guide.

 

End In Sight?

Over a year after the first lockdowns went into effect, the end of the COVID-19 pandemic - or at least the end of the worst of it - appears to be in sight.  That was demonstrated in part by some recent new guidelines from the CDC, advising Americans that it's safe to remove masks outdoors in non-crowded settings.  A walk around a mostly-outdoor zoo on such a day seems pretty appealing.

Of course, many zoos have indoor exhibits, where masks may still be advisable for the short-term... and even outdoors, while the zoo may have considerable acreage, visitors tend to congregate in certain areas, such as viewing windows.  Vaccinations of vulnerable animals have still been fairly minimal.  No zoo wants to be known as the source of a new hotspot, and it's not like we know who is vaccinated or not among the guests, so right now there is a fair bit of hesitancy on the parts of some zoos to fully go masks-down.  

It can be a little frustrating - though most of the visitors I've interacted with have been very good sports about it - and I'm hoping that as numbers improve soon, things can relax a little more.  Every time I see a visitor walking around without one up in a situation where it's required, I remind them in a friendly manner to pull it back up.  So far, everyone has complied just fine.  I always tell them that the end is, hopefully, in sight.

PS: If you're visiting a zoo, remember that the job of mask enforcement has fallen largely onto the shoulders of the frontline guest services staff, such as concessions and gift shop.  They're the least-paid members of the staff and have to dal with a lot, including some fairly rude people everyday - so please, cut them some slack and try not to make their jobs harder than they already are.