I have to admit, I had no idea that the subreddit "Am I The Asshole" was going to prove such a source of zookeeping stories. Yes, I doubt that most of them are true (and some of the wording on this one makes me doubtful), but still, it's always fun seeing zookeeping creeping into pop culture.
So, what's your take? My personal preference for animal transports has been, once you have the animal and you're in the vehicle, you go and keep on going, stopping only when necessary, so that the animal has to spend as little time in the crates as possible and can be unloaded as soon as possible. Sometimes... the job gets stinky.
AITA for not pulling over at my coworker's request, while transporting a cheetah between zoos?
I'm a zookeeper of eleven years and got the call yesterday that we'd acquired 2 cheetahs from another zoo, about four hours away. (Happens from time to time, zoos decide that particular animals might be better off at once facility than another).
We left in one of our transport vans around 2pm. I took two keepers with me - let's call them Seth (who's been around as a swing keeper for a few years, has a bit of cat experience) and Megan (fairly new to the industry, brought her partially for the experience and partially because she was the only other one who wanted some extra hours working late).
We arrive at 6pm and get to see these two beautiful cheetahs, and Seth helps me get them loaded into our crates.
He does ask "shouldn't we wait for them to go potty before driving back with them," which I know is a common practice sometimes, but I said nah, it could be hours, and the van smells of animals already - we'll be getting back late enough as it is. So they agreed and we headed back.
It was a bit cramped but we made it work. Megan sat up front with me and Seth sat in the back with the cheetah crates (had to keep them in the passenger compartment to observe them / make sure they're ok).
The drive back went fine until right before the 3 hour mark, predictably, one of the cheetahs relieved itself. Seth said "oh, oh no it went," and a few seconds later the smell hit us up front. Honestly to me it just smelled like healthy cheetah poo - I was mostly just happy to know the cheetah we got was healthy! It sprayed too (intact male cheetah) which did make it worse.
When the smell hit Megan though she started gagging saying "oh my god it's atrocious." I agreed, but kept driving. Less than a minute later she said "Please can we pull over, I'm going to be sick," I said that it'll be hard to clean this, it's only another hour and a half tops, but she said "I don't know if I can make it an hour in this."
I really hoped we could make it back, but when even Seth lost his composure and started retching I knew this wasn't good, and Megan was practically crying, so I relented and pulled off at the next exit and pulled up behind a gas station to clean the crate, but not before Megan threw up. Seth had to help me transfer the cheetah and then we cleaned the crate and Megan's vomit.
Then we got back in, but Megan recoiled and gagged, saying the van still reeked of vomit, cheetah poo and spray, which was true. She asked if we could let it air out for another hour, but I said no, sorry, it'd barely help and we need to be getting back.
She looked ill and miserable the whole drive back and has been a bit standoffish to me since. I'm not her regular direct manager so it's not really my place to intervene. Seth did say the next day "That's what I was afraid of," but I think my actions were justified.
AITA
tl;dr didn't pull over right away when cheetah had an "accident," coworker got sick
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