Save the Frogs, Wash Your Hands

 I was showing a visitor around the backside of our reptile house one day when, upon opening the back of a python display, a saw a pile of poop on the floor of the cage.  Without a second thought, I reached in, grabbed it up, and tossed it in the trashcan.  I then turned around to the sink immediately behind me and scrubbed my hands.  When I turned back around, my companion was staring at me, horrified.

"Did you just pick that up with your bare hands?" she asked.

"Do you ever forget to wash your hands before you eat, or before you touch your face?" I replied.

"Well, yes."

"I don't."

Working at zoos has made me a compulsive handwasher.  This is not a profession-wide trend, and I think I'm actually something of an outlier.  Sometimes, it's to my detriment.  I remember working on a hard project in one of our exhibits with our team when our manager brought us a box of donuts as a thank you break.  While my coworkers immediately tore into them, I had to sprint across the zoo to find a bathroom... one that wasn't out of soap... and race back in time before they were all gobbled up.  My coworkers, with no such qualms, had already dug in.  I really hoped that those brown smears on the box were chocolate, as opposed to... other things.

I've tried carrying little things of hand sanitizer with me, but dang it, it just doesn't feel the same cleanliness after.

As I demonstrated with the python, washing my hands so much means that I really don't care about getting them dirty at work, since I know they'll be scrubbed clean soon.  But it just means that the scrubbing is essential and non-negotiable.  

Washing your hands doesn't just keep you healthy - it's also important to wash your hands in between animals that you handle to reduce the risk of transferring diseases or parasites.  It also has the benefit of removing the smell of other animals from your hands so as not to entice a reaction you might not want - like, say, a snake biting at your hand because it smells small mammal or bird on them.

The one group of animals that I'm most fastidious about washing around are the amphibians - even though I try to handle them as little as possible.  With their permeable skin, they are likely to absorb environmental contaminants, so I want my hands clean - and that also means rinsed thoroughly so that they don't absorb any soap residue.  Also, their soft skin is easily damaged, so I want my hands to still be wet so I don't inadvertently tear their skin.  This, of course, makes the naturally slippery frogs and salamanders even trickier to hold.

During the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, I was happy to see that handwashing and basic hygiene came into fashion, if only briefly.  That said, I was also horrified to learn how many people weren't washing their hands before and had to be taught this basic skill.