Spring Breakers

It's perhaps the most hectic week of the year.  On a rotating basis, that is.

Say what you will about summer crowds, they at least have three months to spread themselves out over.  And sure, field trips may bring crazy numbers of kids, but they are - nominally - supervised.  Spring break is, if you'll pardon me, an entirely different animal.  

After the first week of summer, I feel like most of the crowds are a little settled.  They've got weeks ahead to enjoy themselves are willing to pace themselves.  There's kind of a desperate, almost forced, panicky sense of wildness in spring breaks.  Like the crowds have to fit in as much excitement as they can before they go back to school.  And if they can't find excitement at the zoo, sometimes they'll make their own.  But what makes it especially rough is if you zoo happens to be located at the boundary of several large school districts.  Then, you have to wonder if it's worse to have two or three weeks of back-to-back-to-back spring breaks, or, in some cases, have them all coincide on one crazy week.

The hardest part of spring break, however is that, because it's still part of the school year, we're often still a little short.  We don't have our seasonal keepers, our interns, our volunteers - many of them will be unable to start yet.  So we face the crowds, but we largely face them alone and understaffed.

Right after the relative calm of winter, it can be an especially jarring transition.  It's almost enough to make you wish summer would just hurry up and get it over with.