Save the Worst for Last

This Bismarck ringed pythons may have been the loveliest snakes in our entire Reptile House - not that anyone other than the small team of keepers ever saw them.  That's because they were kept off exhibit, in a Neodesha (plastic, sliding-front) cage in the backroom, which, while fairly dull, made their bold, black and orange bands stand out that much more vividly.  I always paused to admire them when I came in first thing every morning, but I did not open the door to take care of them then.  No, I wouldn't open the door until the very end of the day, when I would change their newspaper, refill their water, and, depending on the day, maybe weigh them or feed them.  This was the last thing I would do every day, and then I would leave for home, and then take a shower.

On rare occasion, after servicing the ringed pythons, something last minute would pop up elsewhere in the building - maybe a water bowl would be found to have been knocked over, and in need to refilling, or a snake which we were waiting for a fresh fecal from just pooped.  In those cases, there wasn't much I could do, except ask someone else in the building to take care of it for me; or, if someone else had taken care of the ringed pythons that afternoon, they might ask me to clean up something in their section for them.  The understanding was that once you'd touched the pythons, you were - herpetologically speaking - done for the day.

A (presumably healthier) ringed python I photographed at on exhibit at another zoo

That's because our ringed pythons carried cryptosporidiosis, what we usually just called crypto.  Crypto, a parasite-caused infection, shed in the stool or contact with infected animals, can cause diarrhea, vomiting, weight loss, and death, and is one of the most feared diseases in reptile collections.  Our pythons had it and seemed to be perfectly healthy, but there was no guarantee - far from it, really - that any animal that was contaminated by them (with me or another keeper serving as an intermediary) wouldn't die an unpleasant death.  And as such, we made it the policy that the crypto snakes were the last animals to be cared for every day.

There were similar rules elsewhere in the building - healthy animals serviced before sick animals.  Snakes and lizards (generally) serviced before turtles and tortoises (chelonians being considerably germier).  It seemed like every day, there was a constantly changing list of "Do Me Last" animals - and then, among those animals, there was still a separate hierarchy of who was done first or last, with the ringed pythons retaining their place squarely at the end, or we'd each take a separate "last" animal to do at the end of the day.

Few areas of the zoo require keepers to care for so many and so different animals as the reptile house, and with the greater number of species and individuals, there are likely always to be animals with one medical issue or another.  Similar challenges may occur elsewhere in a zoo, but usually not to this scale or frequency (unless the zoo also has an aquarium).  Something as seemingly mundane as deciding which animals to take care of in which order can have major health consequences for hundreds of animals, perhaps the entire collection.